The works in the show draw on a collection of amateur photography saved from reselling websites such as Vinted and eBay as a starting point. Low-fi, blurry, often haphazardly composed images that don’t accurately reflect the items they are supposed to advertise act as visual poems that speak to the melancholy of the domestic. Resistant to commercial criteria, these images clash with their intended role as product photography and instead become foreign bodies in the e-commerce spaces reflecting the fragmented everyday.
Odišarija pays great attention to thingness in her work – she is interested not only in the inexhaustible flow and variety of things but also the very conditions of their existence. Observing what makes something real, the artist seeks to liberate the object from its assigned function.
Led by the mood of the image collection, Odišarija creates new objects employing utilitarian materials that are usually intended to remain unseen or in the background: office supplies, repurposed packaging, various types of paper, adhesive tape, photo album inserts, as well as coffee, pearlescent paint and imitation diamonds.
Fragile, abstract sculptural objects and collages – inaccurately scaled paper fragments of clothing and footwear – act as fuzzy reflections of mass production. Intended to exist as equal participants in reality, these objects ever so slightly slip past it. Highlighting the gap between structured reality and its permeability, the artworks remind us of the shadows in the ordinary field of vision.
Looking at the world through a humorous and tender lens, the artist is searching for a sweet spot between inertia and poetry, burnout and awakening, survival mode and imagination. When the camera focus suddenly shifts and blurs, and a too-bright light burns out and obscures the whole, you are left to surrender to the vibrating surfaces of the world.
Exhibition team: Gediminas G. Akstinas, Gerda Paliušytė, Gailė Pranckūnaitė
Text in the exhibition by James Lowne
Ulijona Odišarija
WEARING
20 March – 12 April 2025
Vilnius Graphic Art Centre
Latako str. 3, Vilnius 01125, Lithuania
graphic.lt
Photography: Laurynas Skeisgiela
