Laura Garbštienė (born 1973) became famous as an artist who hardly fits any definitions. In her creative practice, she has woven together performance, photography, video art, and film into an ornament which has no analogues elsewhere. Most of her works were created at artists’ residencies abroad, where she herself became the object, using performance (often musical), the paradoxical incongruity between language and meaning in a foreign cultural context, and the aesthetics of naiveté. Relying on the cultural heritage or stereotypes of the country where she resides, Garbštienė creates fictional characters – that she herself becomes – who act in imaginary, extraordinary, and awkward situations. 

Through these works, Garbštienė reflects on the artist’s position in terms of success, fame, and economics by threading them all into a single loop (‘A Film about an Unknown Artist’, 2009). Since 2014, her creative repertoire encompasses reflections on natural phenomena, ecological awareness, domesticity, and the decline of rural life, expressed not through theoretical research or lyrical distance but rather through simple and immediate means. In the symposium ‘Spinners’, first presented in 2017, Garbštienė, together with artists Milda Laužikaitė, Jurgita Žvinklytė, and the rural communities of (and around) Marcinkonys village, spent time learning the old spinning wheel technique, without delving into its conceptual interpretations. In her exhibition ‘Blades Slowly Synchronising’ (2019), the artist invited the audience to carve the branches of cut trees, also without providing any intention behind this undertaking. The artist gives priority to authentic experience of processes, unburdened by details: the act itself is already present in our hands, and “art” or “craft” are just a mere couple of all the possible names for describing it.  

Her work has been exhibited at the Contemporary Art Centre and Vartai Gallery in Vilnius, Rauma Biennale Balticum in Finland (2004), the Prague Biennale (2007), and the Liverpool Biennial (2010). ‘A Film about an Unknown Artist’ (2009) received the special mention from the international jury and the International Critics’ Prize (FIPRESCI Prize) at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen.