Natalia Szostak
EKSTRAKCJA | ЭКСТРАКЦИЯ | IŠGAVIMAS
VAA gallery „5 malūnai“, Vilnius
Curator: Marija Marcelionytė-Paliukė
13.10–15.11.2022
Opening 13th of October, 6 pm
The exhibition surveys an ongoing investigation into the layered family roots' makeup and their faint origin. An unpublished memoir guides the passage through international archives, a meander of languages and real-life locations. Crossing the Baltic Sea, retracing two addresses in Telšiai and Vilnius mark the Lithuanian leg of the journey, dead-ending at the Belarus border with a guelder rose bush. In spring, the plant blossoms with creamy-white flowers. By autumn, they turn into round, translucent, bright red berries. Bleeding pink once squashed. In Slavic mythology, the guelder rose symbolized the sun, making it untouchable and sacred. It was said to connect the world of the living with the world of the dead. The extracted borderland fruit dye, splinters of text in a foreign alphabet, long video stills of half-empty streets, recurrent plant quotations in an old woman's tale – the bizarre crop of imploded memory helps reassemble the fragmented image of an uprooting amidst the forgetting.
Natalia Szostak is a visual artist combining traditional and new techniques, action in space, and text. She graduated from San Francisco State University in California (BA 2007), Academy of Art in Szczecin (MA 2012), and University of Arts in Poznan (PhD 2018). Assistant professor at the College of Visual Arts at the Szczecin Academy of Art.
Natalia Szostak will give an Artist talk on 12 of October, 13.30. VAA New building, Graphic Art department, room 314. Everybody is welcome!
