On Friday, March 28th, at 7:30 PM, the performance ‘Lunar Sisterhood’ by Goda Palekaitė will take place at the National Gallery of Art (Konstitucijos Ave. 22, Vilnius).
The Moon, the mysterious queen of the sky, has always captured attention in ancient cosmologies. It is the Moon that affects sea tides, fish spawning, and animal migration. It has long been linked to female reproductive cycles, and it determines the duration of the month in lunar calendars. In Chinese mythology, the lunar goddess Changxi gave birth to twelve daughters, who became twelve months. In Lithuanian, mėnuo has a double meaning — moon and month. Mėnesinės (monthlies, moonies) denotes the female period.
In LUNAR SISTERHOOD, early Baltic women photographers come together for a fictional dialogue in four languages: Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, and English. Women, who never met in real life but quietly worked in the region at roughly the same time and under similar conditions, meet for a picnic in the moonlight. In this space and moment, a fragmented poetic conversation unfolds around celestial bodies, the female body and its place in history, secrets, darkness and light, private and professional spaces, invisible work, and photography.
The Moon has no atmosphere and is, therefore, absolutely silent. Do words sound at all when uttered on the Moon, or do they echo inside your head just like your thoughts do on Earth? Do tornadoes, volcanoes, and ice cracking make sound on the Moon? Can anything make a sound when there is no ear to listen?
Installation LUNAR SISTERHOOD will be ghosting in the exhibition “Silver Girls. Retouched History of Baltic Photography” as the archival artefact of the performance that took place at the opening on March 28, 2025.
Performance and installation by Goda Palekaitė
Composer: Adomas Palekas
Video: Gert van Berckelaer
Production assistant: Julija Česnulaitytė
Performers: Alina Pilecka, Alexandra Bondarev, Margrieta Griestiņa, Sanna Kartau
Goda Palekaitė (b. 1987, Vilnius, Lithuania) is an artist, researcher, and writer working at the intersection of contemporary art, performance, artistic research, literature, and anthropology. She holds a BFA in Fine Arts from the Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts, an MA in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Vienna, and a Post-Master in Artistic Research from A.pass, Brussels; this year, she will defend a PhD at Hasselt University. Goda presents her works internationally, in solo and collaborative exhibitions and performances. She is also the author of two books (Schismatics and Conditions of Creativity) as well as various essays and experimental texts. Her practice evolves around projects and programmes exploring the politics of historical narratives, the agency of dreams and fiction, and alternative discourses of knowledge. Goda is currently the curator of the Alternative Education Programme at Rupert, centre for art, education, and residencies in Vilnius.
