Group exhibition ‘Bakakay’ runs at Atletika gallery until 15 March 2025, featuring artists Stephanie Baechler, Sara Bjarland, Ina Budrytė, Polyrabbit Duplicate, Monika Kornilova, Simonas Nekrošius, Artūras Mitinas, Hanna Umin. The exhibition is curated by Bakakay collective (Monika Kornilova and Artūras Mitinas).
Bakakay combines ideas of childishness, uncertainty and the uncomfortable. It is known that babbling infants can produce any sound that occurs in human speech, but as soon as they learn to speak one specific language with its specific sounds, they lose this ability. Thinking not only about verbal communication, but also about broader human activities, the exhibition focuses on the potential of formlessness as well as the experimental and sensory approaches that open it up.
The curators of the exhibition are wondering what positive or infantilising forces are at work in contemporary society – between lulling self-centredness and experimental openness, between escapism and productive disinterest, between alienation from one’s body and repressed, uncomfortable corporeality.
The artists participating in the exhibition reflect on these themes or states through their artistic practices, using open, draughty creative processes. Playfully revealing possibilities and tactile qualities of the material, they search for a relationship between narrative and bodily experience. The exhibition includes everyday finds turned into aesthetic objects, DIY sound objects, experimental painting, ceramics and animation. The artworks are used to create a dialogue with the building and the history of the neighbourhood.
The history of the building where gallery Atletika is currently located, and where the boarding school for children with intellectual disabilities was run, was shaped by the school founders, philanthropists, architects, staff and pupils. The social landscape of the area has changed dramatically over the last two centuries, as monasteries and gardens have given way to prisons, boarding schools and bases for power structures. The curators and researchers of the exhibition seek to look into personal and communal pasts, discovering the relationship between the distant signs of the past and the active processes shaping the present.
The research accompanying the exhibition has beenpublished in the Artnews.lt magazine and was presented as a separate closing event at the cultural centre SODAS 2123.
Artists – Stephanie Baechler, Sara Bjarland, Ina Budrytė, Polyrabbit Duplicate, Monika Kornilova, Simonas Nekrošius, Artūras Mitinas, Hanna Umin.
Curators – Bakakay collective (Monika Kornilova, Artūras Mitinas).
Researchers – Saulė Ziziliauskas, Monika Kornilova, Artūras Mitinas, Lukas Mykolaitis, Paulius Jevsejevas.
Designer – Izabelė Žepnickaitė.
Exhibition dates & times 2025/02/07 – 03/15
Thursdays & Fridays 16.00–19.00, Saturdays 14.00–18.00.
Address: Atletika gallery, Vitebsko 21, Vilnius.
Free entry to all events and the exhibition.
Organised by the Lithuanian Interdisciplinary Artists’ Association and Bakakay collective. Activities of LIAA are financed by the Lithuanian Council for Culture and Vilnius City Municipality.
www.atletikaprojects.lt
Photography: Lukas Mykolaitis
Exhibition ‘Bakakay’. Photography by Lukas Mykolaitis.
Monika Kornilova ‘Untitled’, 2025. Exhibition ‘Bakakay’. Photography by Lukas Mykolaitis.
Hanna Umin ‘Aegisthus’, 2024. Exhibition ‘Bakakay’. Photography by Lukas Mykolaitis.
Exhibition ‘Bakakay’. Photography by Lukas Mykolaitis.
Hanna Umin ‘Electra’, 2024. Exhibition ‘Bakakay’. Photography by Lukas Mykolaitis.
Ina Budrytė ‘Lunar Power Station’, 2023. Exhibition ‘Bakakay’. Photography by Lukas Mykolaitis.
Ina Budrytė ‘Lunar Power Station’, 2023. Exhibition ‘Bakakay’. Photography by Lukas Mykolaitis.
Ina Budrytė ‘Lunar Power Station’, 2023. Exhibition ‘Bakakay’. Photography by Lukas Mykolaitis.
Artūras Mitinas ‘Descent’, 2025. Exhibition ‘Bakakay’. Photography by Lukas Mykolaitis.
Artūras Mitinas ‘Descent’, 2025, detail. Exhibition ‘Bakakay’. Photography by Lukas Mykolaitis.
Ina Budrytė ‘Trip’, 2024. Polyrabbit Duplicate ‘Protest for Indulgence for the Demolished Žalgiris Stadium’, 2024. Exhibition ‘Bakakay’. Photography by Lukas Mykolaitis.
Polyrabbit Duplicate ‘Protest for Indulgence for the Demolished Žalgiris Stadium’, 2024. Exhibition ‘Bakakay’. Photography by Lukas Mykolaitis.
Sara Bjarland ‘Erosive Habits I, II’ (Eroziniai įpročiai II, I), 2023. Exhibition ‘Bakakay’. Photography by Lukas Mykolaitis.
Sara Bjarland ‘Erosive Habits I, II’ (Eroziniai įpročiai II, I), detail, 2023. Exhibition ‘Bakakay’. Photography by Lukas Mykolaitis.
Exhibition ‘Bakakay’. Photography by Lukas Mykolaitis.
Exhibition ‘Bakakay’. Photography by Lukas Mykolaitis.
Stephanie Baechler ‘The Gesture of..’, 2021. Exhibition ‘Bakakay’. Photography by Lukas Mykolaitis.
Stephanie Baechler ‘Clairevoyant’, 2021. ‘The Gesture of..’, 2021. Exhibition ‘Bakakay’. Photography by Lukas Mykolaitis.
Stephanie Baechler ‘The Gesture of..’, 2021. Exhibition ‘Bakakay’. Photography by Lukas Mykolaitis.
Stephanie Baechler ‘Funny figures’, 2023. Exhibition ‘Bakakay’. Photography by Lukas Mykolaitis.
Stephanie Baechler ‘Funny figures’, 2023. Exhibition ‘Bakakay’. Photography by Lukas Mykolaitis.
Stephanie Baechler ‘Funny figures’, 2023. Exhibition ‘Bakakay’. Photography by Lukas Mykolaitis.
Stephanie Baechler ‘Funny figures’, 2023. Exhibition ‘Bakakay’. Photography by Lukas Mykolaitis.
Exhibition ‘Bakakay’. Photography by Lukas Mykolaitis.
Hanna Umin ‘Iphigenia’, 2023. Exhibition ‘Bakakay’. Photography by Lukas Mykolaitis.
Stephanie Baechler ‘Tenderness of the workers’, 2021. Ina Budrytė ‘Thought’, 2024. Simonas Nekrošius ‘O’ 2024. Exhibition ‘Bakakay’. Photography by Lukas Mykolaitis.
Ina Budrytė ‘Thought’, 2024. Exhibition ‘Bakakay’. Photography by Lukas Mykolaitis.
Simonas Nekrošius ‘O’ 2024. Exhibition ‘Bakakay’. Photography by Lukas Mykolaitis.
