There is no chance to look into every yard. On ‘Indigenous Narratives’ at the National Gallery of Art in Vilnius

Recently in the last few years, I would often hear ‘Where are you from?’ owing to my foreign-sounding last name, which used to give me goosebumps as I sniffed down a blunt curiosity and need to pin a label on me. However, when I arrived in Lithuania a few months ago, I began to understand that the same question meant something entirely different; perhaps as an encouragement that touched upon the past, or a particular region and its complexities, rather than of nationhood, promoted across many countries these days. The local history of Vilnius is, in fact, composed of collective storylines from the past echoed  in the present — for quite a long time Vilnius was home to a major Jewish community, to Ruthenians, a populous Polish and Russian minority, Crimean Karaites and Tatars, who have all coexisted over time.

“When you burn yourself, you need to gather spiderwebs with dry mutton manure and sprinkle it on yourself, then burn the edges of a tree and upon grinding it together into charcoal sprinkle this over it,” suggests one of the captions in the exhibition Indigenous Narratives at the National Gallery of Art in Vilnius. This is just one excerpt of a multitude of stories accompanying the show, complementing works presented in different mediums: mainly photography, three paintings, various exemplifications and utensils of craft, a quern-stone that can be tried out by visitors, several musical instruments, a sound installation and a barley meadow in front of the gallery where particular voices, anecdotes, archaic songs and tales interweave to disclose elusive and overlooked narratives from a backdrop of some of the most distinct communities and country dwellers of Lithuania during the nineteenth and twentieth century. Kazys, Ona, Juozas, Agota, Katrė, Stepas, Pranas, Eugenija, Vincas; just some of the storytellers whose voices are inherently part of the exhibition and referred to in the title, as well as other protagonists — Aniceta, Stasys, Teresė, Jonas, Janė, Petras, Mykolas, Uršulė, Anupras (whose names appear next to the Lithuanian title), have all been selected from around one hundred and fifty individuals in what was almost a seven-year-long research process exploring ethnos in relation to countryside dwellers based on ethnographic, folkloric resource analysis, the fundamental basis of which seeks to make interpretive sociocultural anthropology more accessible (1).

The exhibition formally commences with the monumental triptych Lithuania, by genre painter and scenographer Adomas Galdikas. Hung to the right-hand-side of the entrance, each of the three paintings represent a different period and official narrative he conceived for the Lithuanian pavilion at the Paris 1937 Exposition Internationale, which earned him a well-deserved Grand Prix. To the right of the triptych is the earliest work in the show, Kanuty Rusiecki’s Reaper (1844), considered to be one of the most well-known works in Lithuanian art history, related to the mid-19th century when Lithuanians were under the ordination of the Russian Czar. In this work one sees a serene-looking female depicted with a sickle and blades of cropped rye in her hands. Further on, one encounters Summer in the fields (1946), by Antanas Žmuidzinavičius, executed in a Stalinist manner — an idyllic scene in which a couple are seen stepping into a glowing field. Žmuidzinavičius was also a charismatic collector, assembling multiple objects including demonic figurines, satyr sculptures and masks, all of which helped initiate the present-day Devil’s Museum in Kaunas, which somehow opens up another chapter of this exhibition.

Several dozen “anthropomorphic, zoomorphic and demonic” Užgavėnės theatrical masks made for the most part by self-taught artisans are gathered together across the wall featuring the three paintings. These date back to the beginning of the twentieth century when the polity attempted to reconstruct pre-Christian religion with some of its visible manifestations and customs being revived today through the neo-pagan movement Romuva (2). The archaic-looking, playful masks are reminiscent of the other, created to repel and amuse, related to the celebration of Shrove Tuesday (Užgavėnės translated), the last day of the carnival known as Mardi Gras – (‘Fat Tuesday’) which counts forty-seven days before Easter in several other European traditions which confirms, to some extent how Christian and Pagan customs managed to persist until today. It is also about expecting the Winter season and goddess Morė, represented by an effigy of a witch or storyteller who according to tradition is burned and thrown into the nearest river or pond in a collective act that is perhaps somewhat misogynistic and done in the anticipation of the Spring season coming.

The main focus of Margarita Matulytė, the researcher and curator of the exhibition, revolves around different aspects of photography and history, reflected in the works exhibited. The photographs originate from a range of Lithuanian institutions including Šiauliai “Aušros” Museum, M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art in Kaunas and The Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore among other collections. Some were printed out on scaled pieces of fabric and hung in certain places, as was the case of a photo from 1902 dangled close to the entrance, depicting peasants in Vaitkūnai village in the Ukmergė area, northwest of Vilnius. Its author, Stanislovas Kazimieras Kosakovskis, also known as Count Stanisław Kazimierz Korwin-Kossakowski, was an organiser of the Warsaw Photographic Society and an acclaimed collector who focused on genealogical studies, often taking photographs of peasant family life, landscape and architecture. The other photographs are presented on rows of cone-shaped showcases, to roam through as a metaphor for the field and the furrow. The works by Norbertas Vėlius are noteworthy, which seem to take glimpses into peoples’ lives from up close and are more than just documents as they appear to sketch psychological features of the people Vėlius encountered during his expeditions. This active international ethnographer and researcher explored Baltic myths among others, and his recordings of oral history largely contributed to the collection of folklore manuscripts based on storytelling, now kept at the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore in Vilnius. 

Thanks to visual evidences from historians, museologists and the practitioners Vladas Trinka, Stasys Vaitkus, Česlovas Liutikas and Vincentas Vaitiekūnas, among others, we are able to peek into various locations: the coastal Nida, near the border of today’s Kaliningrad region; through the outskirts of the city of Šiauliai in present-day northern Lithuania; to “the beauty of meadows” in the village of Budriai, near Radviliškis. A little aberration to an unremitting viewing of the exhibition came from one of the captions below a photo contributed by a participant of the National Revival who conducted anthropometric measurements within a community of Samogitia (Žemaitija in Lithuanian); a description of a study subject written by the cultural and political activist, Povilas Višinskis, during his biology studies at Saint Petersburg University, from one of his field trips in which he visited over 30 locations, concluded in his work Anthropological characteristics of Samogitians (1897).

Thanks to the carefully selected photographs in the show, we can observe different individuals in their habitats and catch glimpses of some unique natural and architectural backdrops – in particular some composed of thatched roofs and shingles, which overlap with handmade patterns, woven willow baskets and other bespoke utensils — proving just how much craft was an essential part of people’s everyday lives. Taking a closer look at their proximity to the animals they lived with, one can notice how nature and their surroundings merge, and see how modernisation gradually enters their lives. Some peculiar examples of craft on display are very admirable: an almost entirely non-decorative linen taračkinis by Marcelė Vaškelytė from the early 20th century — its finish is a strong example of diligent Lithuanian thrift, with long and loose unwoven threads twisted and tied together to create a lace finish, particularly once the majority of its production has concluded. Another piece worth mentioning is a wool yarn dekelis bedspread in three colours — faded deep-blue, pale green and black stripes — woven by Stasė Turskienė. “After the day’s labour, on autumn and winter evenings women would sit down by their spinning wheels,” reads the caption where finally, there’s a peculiar set of artisan wood-carved distaffs, which in Lithuanian we would refer to as verpstė, the most meticulously ornamental part of a spinning wheel. Geometric yet organic shapes: ears of corn, heart-shaped apertures, initials and even slim love messages left by their creators for their fiancées, all of these carefully crafted oval-shaped objects are showcased in the show, dating back to 1866. And finally: a device for spinning thread itself is presented next to these.

A major part of the exhibition which cannot be dismissed is religiosity, or rather people’s spirituality resonating with everyday rural life — one that is filled with hope of land bringing desired crops and yields, in sync with some of the pagan folk traditions as depicted in the Morė effigies. Yet the reciprocity between people’s labour and nature is not only about observing seasons, craft and work in the field, but the vividness of rites related to the yearly intervals connecting specifically with Christian iconography that manifests itself in the concluding part of the exhibition vis-à-vis the “official” introduction of the show through the three paintings by the entrance. A few artefacts testifying to religiosity in the countryside are represented by some wood-carved figures of the Saviour made by self-taught artisans, crucifixes on small architectural features at the crossroads, well-illustrated by a Chapel with the Saviour’s Sculpture with the scale of a doll’s house, by an unknown author from the 19th century. This artefact, which includes a little seated figure of a distressed resting son of God, also known as “Pensive Christ”, leads us back to the Lithuanian pavilion at the 1937 Paris exhibition. Aside from Galdikas’s triptych on display was a wooden sculpture Rūpintojėlis (in English, ‘caregiver’) by the artist Vytautas Kašuba, referring to quite a common ​​carver’s tradition of creating pensive Christ figures, which emerged across Lithuanian towns and villages. A similar seated figure can be found on the “hill of crosses” near the city of Šiauliai, apparently being an important symbol of national and religious resistance to Sovietisation (3). 

Field of Times is a barley field rising as an extra muros installation next to the NDG building, proposed by the exhibition architect Sigita Simona Paplauskaitė, an architect who also created a pocket-size meadow in London for one of the recent editions of Festivals of Architecture. The field will remain in the area over the course of several months, becoming a “prairie” for planting and harvesting in the city, in preparation for the winter time. Šnipiškės, now one of central districts of Vilnius, has shapeshifted into a ‘new city centre’ in the last decades, almost entirely disappearing remnants of the past, namely wooden architecture with modestly-decorated artisanal details that can still be spotted in a number of Vilnius locations, giving the impression of a forgotten heritage in the Lithuanian capital.

As stories, an imminent part of this presentation has been transmitted orally as voice-based material. It also brings together tools to mediate these stories through other means including instruments: a wooden trumpet (reed pipe) from the 1920s; a Labanoras bagpipe of leather and wood; and ceramic whistles shaped like little animalistic sculptures from the 1960s. Presented is a sound installation entitled Indigenous Phonograms by Marius Juknevičius which collects different recordings gathered during the expeditions from the first decade of the 20th century. Thanks to phonograms registered by many conveners who roamed across the countryside to collect and then store these immaterial documents, we can hear songs from a region heard in the open overlapping with subjective narratives in the exhibition room. These voices migrating from one part of the gallery space to another, also appear in other public spaces in Vilnius, Kaunas and Palanga thanks to the digital extension of the show. “There was a huge forest” is communicated by one of the storytellers, Hubertas Petrauskas (1976) in one of the examples of this digital narrative that can be found near the NDG building (4). 

The mediation and captions included in the booklet seem to deliberately instruct viewers only to a certain extent, as if all of the presented items could somehow speak for themselves. This allows for a more open-ended interpretation of the stories and visual evidence on display here, of these rare moments of leisure, after working in the field, or the portrait photographs disclosing individual protagonists. Even so, more questions seem to pop up when roaming in the show, like: to what extent do the selected examples of craft reflect the ‘indigenous’ stories, and what do they mean altogether? Ultimately, how do we read the title of the exhibition in light of the ‘indigenous’ yet more recognised cultures from the Baltics and other regions? What if it was just the first chapter of a long-term focus to be unfolded at Nacionaline Dailes Galerija in Vilnius, including more mediums, collection objects and contemporary artists’ interventions?

As other exhibitions and projects show, folk and ‘indigeneity’ can be interpreted in a number of novel ways, as reflected in the video Agents by interdisciplinary artist Anastasia Sosunova which collects voices of ‘folk art history’ through extensive research-based interviews with amateur sculptors, shown as part of the recent Baltic Triennial 14 at the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius. Another example is a feature film by Agnieszka Polska entitled The Thousand-Year Plan, which looks at the electrification of the Polish countryside in the years following WWII, currently on at Warsaw’s Museum of Modern Art, along with its public programme which focuses on technological modernisations. The forthcoming exhibition Universe of the Farm Yard at Kumu Art Museum, Tallinn, also takes a specific look at artists’ ‘others’ as was promoted by Karl Pärsimägi’s 1935 Self-Portrait with Pearls. It’s also worth mentioning individual practices: artist Jaanus Samma’s ongoing explorations think through local craft traditions from the past through his Patterns series; Daniel Rycharski’s bottom-up community work in his hometown of Kurówko bring independent queer activism and religiosity together. 

“Whilst going down the road, there is no chance to look into every yard; it seems the garden of one farmstead is still here, when you see yet another house,” leads one of the voices in the exhibition. By touching upon the collective memory of the Lithuanian countryside in a non-didactic, navigation-free and open-ended structure, the show Indigenous Narratives serves more as a starting point to touch upon some of the oral histories insufficiently represented in a collective memory than a showcase capturing and encapsulating Lithuanian ethnic communities. The exhibition can be interpreted as an attempt to remain conscious of the continuity of non-linear narratives intertwining with overlooked identities in the regions of Lithuania to reflect on their unique complexity over the last centuries as one of the Baltic states. It also reflects shared traditions, beliefs and nuanced differences between different indigenous communities — not only Lithuanian — that are active in the area. Given the current political perspective and tensions reflected in the government’s anti-refugee policies that have led to the construction of a five hundred and fifty kilometre razor-wire barrier on Lithuania’s frontier with Belarus to declaring a state of emergency in border areas with its neighbouring Poland and Latvia to “control an unprecedented influx of migration”, it is important to reflect on the meandering of traditions and the voices of others from the past who came together to form what we now call ‘nations’. 

(1) Margarita Matulytė, Tapatybė be įvaizdžio. Prieškario Lietuva Stasio Vaitkaus ekspedicijų fotoarchyve [Identity without trope. Pre-war Lithuania in the photo archive of the expeditions of Stasys Vaitkus], ‘Sovijus’, 2014, t. 2, nr. 2, p. 25–40.
(2) See: Rasa Pranskevičiūtė, Contemporary paganism in Lithuanian context: principal beliefs and practices of Romuva, ‘Modern pagan and native faith movements in Central and Eastern Europe’, edited by Kaarina Aitamurto, Scott Simpson, Durham: Acumen, 2013, pp. 77–93.
(3) See: V. Stanley Vardys, Resistance, Survival and Reform, ‘Lithuania: The Rebel Nation’, Boulder: Taylor and Francis, 2018, pp. 80–91.
(4) The lively folklore song traditions are inscribed in the Lithuanian culture and the wave of ethnographic and conservatory students’ expeditions are to be found in Guntis Šmidchens’s The Power of Song: Nonviolent National Culture in the Baltic Singing Revolution, University of Washington Press, 2014. 

Acknowledgements: Margarita Matulytė, Ugnė Marija Makauskaitė 

Photo documentation from the exhibition ‘Indigenous Narratives’ at the National Gallery of Art. ^[1]