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‘Elsewhere’ is a place and an idea. Being elsewhere is not only about the pleasures of the unknown in a new location, but also about ambiguities, confusions and confluences of identity, negotiations of difference and absence.

Since 1990 many Lithuanians have moved to live permanently in the UK, mainly driven by economic forces, but also by different opportunities open in this country. Some of them are visual artists, others engage in creative activities on various levels of professionalism seeking to reflect on their presence elsewhere. The exhibition Kitur*.Elsewhere is an attempt to map the resulting creative practices and reveal the underlying discourse of diverse modalities of elsewhere: people coming from and into different social / cultural / geographical contexts, different and the same emotions elsewhere, transforming identities, the illusory mystery of the unknown, absence of the place they all came from, and the attraction of a place that allows to be someone else. While most of the works presented here have a feel of personal diary, some engage in critique of institutional and cultural domination. But ultimately, all émigré artists face the question: is it better to be a big fish in a small pond or plankton in a very big one?

Kitur.Elsewhere is also a set of interventions: of Lithuanians into both traditional British and multicultural metropolitan context of the UK; of a marginalised minority into the world centre of the arts; of free-spirited art into a non-art space of an institution whose raison d’être is to represent official matters of the state (new site of  Lithuanian Embassy, awaiting renovation – itself next to one of the greatest venues of art, Tate Britain).

Aleksandras Aleksejevas, Alma Alex, Migle Bačkovaitė, Cooltūristės, Nomeda Čiurlionytė, Lina Eidėnaitė, Liutauras Griežė, JAKA, Asta Kalpokaitė, Audrius Kazbaras, Mindaugas Komskis, Judita Kuniskytė, Aidas Nemunaitis, Olga Onaitienė, Marijus Petrušonis, Vytenis Sinkevičius, Leonas Somovas, Julijonas Urbonas, Jovita Valaitytė, Milda Vasiliauskaitė. 

Join us at the private view of the exhibition on 6 June or visit on 7-13 June, from 4 pm to 8 pm daily.

Image from Centre of Attraction ©  Marijus Petrušonis

*'Kitur' Lithuanian for 'Elsewhere'

Cultural attaché inf.