Pakui Hardware is a Lithuanian duo consisting of artists Neringa Černiauskaitė and Ugnius Gelguda which was formed in 2014. In their work, they explore relationships between the body, technology and economy by merging design, biology and art. Their installation Inflammation centred around the inflammatory effects of current economic and social conditions on human and planetary bodies, will be exhibited at the Pavilion of Lithuania at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia which opens on 20th April 2024. The installation, located at the Sant’Antonin church, will feature aluminium and glass sculptures by Pakui Hardware alongside modern figurative painting by Lithuanian artist Marija Teresė Rožanskaitė (1933-2007). We had a chat about the upcoming exhibition and preparation for it.
Aleksandra Mainka-Pawlowska: What is the Lithuanian art scene like?
Pakui Hardware: It is incredibly vibrant for such a small country! Not only do we have large-scale institutions such as the Lithuanian National Museum of Art with its dozen departments, and the Contemporary Art Centre, which is about to open Sapiega Palace, but also a number of smaller-scale non-profits, galleries, artists’ unions, and residencies. As Lithuania hasn’t had a strong art market, which only recently gained stronger momentum, it allowed for wider experimentation and collaboration among the artists, cultural producers as well as arts organizations. What’s important is that the whole core of the art scene is not accumulated in the capital city, but is dispersed all around the country, making it more polyphonic.
AMP: Can you tell us more about the meaning behind the titular Inflammation and how it’s reflected in your artwork?
Pakui Hardware: The title refers to inflammation both as a biological process and as a notion to reflect upon the current state of human and planetary bodies (which are in a pretty bad shape). Under healthy conditions, inflammation acts as an ancient and natural mechanism of a body to withstand damage or threat. However, if the conditions remain harmful and threatening, the inflammation becomes chronic and goes out of control. Such are not only current social, economic and ecological conditions of today but also have been a continuous exposome for a number of people. According to the authors of a book, which became a departing point for our installation, “Inflamed: Deep Medicine and Anatomy of Injustice”, human and planetary inflammation should be first of all linked to colonial capitalist cosmology, which created artificial boundaries, such as a division between humans and nature, that opened up doors for easier subjugation and exploitation. Critique of Western cosmology and its extractive mindset has been one of the key elements in our previous pieces too, in which we inquired the invented divisions, bringing in hybridity and interconnectedness through our installations as well as criticising the expansion of Capitalism.
In Venice, the human and planetary scales are connected through a special environment, created together with an architectural duo Isora X Lozuraityte Studio, in which landscape, light, architectural structures and our sculptures merge into an inseparable whole. The sculptures, made of materials that literally went through intense heat – aluminium and glass – derived from anatomical drawings of the human nervous system. In the pieces, the system is fragmented, enlarged or recomposed, this way once again referencing to the Western approach to treating bodies – focusing on fragments of it, instead of taking into account the entire exposome in which the bodies are immersed. It is not the organs that must be healed, but the malfunctioning systems themselves. Such fragmentation is further reinforced by the paintings of the historic artist Marija Teresė Rožanskaitė, which will become an integral part of the pavilion.
AMP: What role do the works of Marija Teresė Rožanskaitė play in your installation?
Pakui Hardware: We have been exploring Rožanskaitė’s paintings, depicting various scenes from the medical field, for more than several years. It became a point of reference already in our previous “trilogy” that focused on telemedicine and robotic surgery (“Virtual Care”, “Absent Touch” and “The Host”). In the works of Rožanskaitė, created mostly in the 70’s and 80’s, human bodies are mostly depicted in fragments, surrounded by technology, surgical draperies and tubes. By employing such strategies of presentation, she managed to quietly criticise both larger systems of her time and rapidly developing technologies, revealing how those systems render human bodies and personalities into anonymous “cogs” of ideological projects. Thus her inclusion in the pavilion is not some kind of artificial way of putting two historically different practices into a dialogue. It is more of a move to show how seemingly different political and economic ideologies were both extractive and threatening in different ways. What’s important, is that together with the curators of the pavilion, Valentinas Klimašauskas and João Laia, we also selected some of her more abstract paintings, depicting celestial bodies and landscapes, this way re-connecting the human-planetary scales on another medium.
AMP: The Lithuanian pavilion is in Chiesa di Sant’Antonin – do you think the location will affect how the artwork is perceived?
Pakui Hardware: This church atmosphere is surely going to be an integral part of the overall experience of the pavilion. As it’s been closed from the visitors for more than ten years, it had a sense of dereliction in it, which our team truly loved. Only due to our commissioner’s, Arūnas Gelūnas, restless work, we managed to negotiate with the church management to have the installation presented there. As churches are places of transformation and soul exploration, it would add a new layer to thinking of other ways of healing bodies, by reconnecting them with other beings. Sant’Antonin church also has quite an unusual architectural layout – a square – which allowed to make the installation a unified environment. As the pavilion’s installation contains many references to ailing bodies, prosthetics and medical technology, it would create an intriguing contrast to the historic environment as well as historic paintings and decorations in the church, in which one can encounter bodies going through various forms of suffering too.
AMP: I imagine an installation as large as Inflammation must require a lot of effort and time to put together. Could you tell us more about the preparation process and getting ready for the Biennale?
Pakui Hardware: We are writing these words inside the church at this very moment, on Sunday afternoon – this is how intense the preparations are! In full steam! As the pavilion is installed in a place of heritage, there are a number of restrictions regarding it, which led us and the architects to think in more creative ways of how to present the landscape and mount the sculptures without touching the walls and ceiling of the church. In a sense, we’re building an architecture within architecture. This, of course, requires an incredible amount of preparation, engineering and mounting. Also, the paintings of Rožanskaitė are going to be presented in an unconventional way, creating some extra effort from the team. We’re also working together with a light artist Eugenijus Sabaliauskas and his team, who are going to create a choreography of light in this meditative environment.
AMP: If you find time to take a break from presenting your installation, what will you try to see while at the Biennale?
Pakui Hardware: The main exhibition, of course, which is always extremely exciting as one can enter the curator’s mind and her/his/their mapping of the international art scene. This year it is particularly important as it presents artists that have never been included in the curated shows of the biennale before. Naturally, we’ll try to visit most of the national pavilions that are located in the main venues and around the city. But let’s see how much time there is left aside from the train of daily guided tours!
