April 1, 2022 – May 14, 2022
Kunstraum Niederoesterreich start exhibition program with the opening of Oh, make your fingernails into spades, Your palms into shovels, the first institutional solo exhibition of the Polish-Lithuanian duo Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė in Austria.
At Kunstraum, you can expect a selection of the duo’s recent works, which set a melancholic, elegiac tone. The title of the exhibition is a quote from a lament the duo wrote as the basis of their video installation Mouthless Part II (2021), which is also part of the exhibition. How can we relate to a present that, with Timothy Morton, shows similarities to noir fiction? A present in which we are both criminal and investigator in the same case? On the list of charges: the sixth mass extinction, the Anthropocene, and the emergence of new viruses.
However gloomy this may sound, Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė do not design didactic educational pieces in their multimedia practice, nor will you leave the exhibition in deep melancholy: Their practice combines theoretical and literary references with references to Eastern European folklore in a fascinating way – with a pronounced sensitivity to sensory and material details.
If COVID regulations require registration for the opening night, we’ll let you know here, in our newsletter, and on our social media channels. Be that as it may: Celebrate with us the start of the exhibition year 2022!
After meeting during studies at the Royal College of Art in London, Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė have been working as a duo since 2013. Their multimedia practice – which includes performances, videos, sculptural and installation works, but perfumes, too – draws from extensive historical and theoretical research processes, a high sensitivity towards materials, and intellectual openness. They founded the YOUNG GIRL READING GROUP, a nomadic reading circle, in 2013, received the Swiss Performance Art Award in 2021 along with the Collide Residency Award, which will support their residencies at CERN (Geneva) and at Hangar in Barcelona in 2022.
Image: courtesy: Dorota Gawęda & Eglė Kulbokaitė, Mouthless Part II, 2021, video still