Lina Lapelytė
Lina Lapelyte, Hunky Bluff @ Park Nights, Serpentine 2014, photo by Lewis Ronald, courtesy the artist and Serpentine gallery
The performance-based artistic practice of Lina Lapelytė (born 1984) is intimately connected with music. She plays with popular culture, gender stereotypes, and the feeling of nostalgia. Combining several disciplines in her work, the artist has lately delved into various forms of performativity and experimented with generic boundaries. Lapelytė combines elements of popular music and opera with folk rituals and the modern culture of everyday life. Her performances can be characterized by their stylized expressiveness, grotesque elements, theatrical allure, expressive visuals and conceptual musicality. In her artistic work, she explores the themes of otherness, beauty, age, and seemingly immovable stereotypes, critically reflecting on the topical issues relating to gender, cultural identity, and various social groups.
In her projects, she often involves members of communities and groups; these initiatives become a place where professional performers and amateurs meet. The methodology of collective work is also reflected in her successful creative collaborations. The joint work by Lina Lapelytė, Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, and Vaiva Grainytė, the opera-performance ‘Sun and Sea’ (2019), represented Lithuania at the 58th Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art in 2019 and won the main Golden Lion Prize. This award-winning work speaks about climate change, global anxiety, and fatigue in an effortless and captivating way. Lying on the sandy beach, a tired workaholic, complaining ladies, wealthy mums, a philosopher, and other characters sing about their joys, personal sorrows and global calamities, and at the same time our inevitable involvement, as spectators watching this scene from above, in these global processes. Earlier, in 2013, this same creative team’s debut modern opera ‘Have a Good Day!’ had already received six international awards. The opera, which relates the different destinies of a shopping centre’s employees, has toured dozens of festivals around the world and was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and Lithuanian Radio and Television (LRT).
Lina Lapelytė’s works have been exhibited at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2019), the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art in Paris (2019), the Warsaw Center for Contemporary Art (2018), XIII Baltic Triennial in Tallinn (2018), Kim? Contemporary Art Center in Riga (2018); she has put on a solo exhibition at Rupert in Vilnius (2017); and held exhibitions at the Moderna Museum in Malmö (2017), FIAC in Paris (2017), the Baltic Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2016); and has appeared in group exhibitions such as the Focal Point Gallery in Southend-on-Sea, the United Kingdom (2016), Double Bind at NILO in Reykjavik (2016) and Rupert in Vilnius (2015), Listening (travelling exhibition) throughout the United Kingdom (2015), Block Universe in London (2015), Park Nights at Serpentine in London (2014), Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Newcastle (2014), Eye and Lens at the Whitechapel Gallery in London (2014), and the David Roberts Art Foundation (DRAF) Gallery in London (2014). Since 2013, she has taught as a visiting lecturer at art institutions including the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford, University of the Arts London, the Royal College of Art, the Royal Academy of Arts in London, Oslo Academy of Arts, and Vilnius Academy of Arts. In 2019, she was awarded with the Lithuanian National Culture and Art Prize.