Marija Marcelionytė-Paliukė personal exhibition "Archeology of the strike. Behind closed doors” at Impact12 conference, Bristol, UK, September 21-24, 2023.

During the pandemic everybody was, and still is, experiencing shifted life. Nobody knows what kind of impact this period will have on us, humans, our children. But definitely will... What kind of violence to ourselves or from the world we are experiencing behind closed doors during this uncertain times?

Within the exhibition "Behind closed doors. Archeology of the Strike" I suggest not the answers, but the moment of stopping, when through the visual elements of the installation a person meets himself and asks about the imprint in his soul, mind, body, which can be pulled out of nowhere and given a shape with the help of printmaking media.

Installation has three parts: on the left (darker side) - a print titled „Time test“. The image selected for the "Time test" print is a stop short from the video „Action“. (All photopolymer prints on the right are created using test print data). At the center of the installation is a time-lapse video projection „Action“ (about the video below), projected as an analogy to distorted reality on an angled wall. This piece is a source for all prints of the exhibition. Images of the prints are graphite marks (strikes) on the paper while creating and/or fighting a drawing „Action“.

It‘s a key aspect for me, as a printmaker artists, to find ways and methods how not multiplied marks convert to prints. Doing so I seek to add another layer to the whole idea, exploring the benefits printmaking brings as a media. At this particular installation it‘s not possible to find more targeted technological choice than printing(!) because it allowed me to produce repeated images which are physically embossed in the paper (intaglio process). Changing colors, layering the plates and exhibiting a cloud of overlapping prints on the light side of the installation reinforce the idea of an existing or emerging scar even more.

Somehow I think that when the pain has a form, it‘s easier to deal with it...

Marija Marcelionytė-Paliukė
Action. It turns out I love doing it so much!
Performance 2021 03 15, 99 sec

During the quarantine I started drawing again. Basically after a 20-year break. After graduating from the Vilnius Academy of Arts I did my best not to. And now I draw every looser moment again. Formats are growing, hammering nails into the walls everywhere I find an empty space to hook drawings up because I don’t know where to put the accumulating amount of them.

For this action, I kneaded a piece of clay saturated with graphite and attacked a huge sheet of white paper with it. I needed this fight, this movement. It seems to me that I demand an answer to the question - why I haven't drawn for so many years because it turns out I love doing it so much!

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Marija Marcelionytė-Paliukė "Archeology of the Strike. Behind Closed Doors"

For the opportunity to participate in the International Imapct 12 Conference and to hold a solo exhibition in Bristol (UK), I would like to thank the Lithuanian Council for Culture, which provided an educational state grant in the field of art for cultural and artistic creators, and the VDA's Erasmus+ exchange programme.