Paulius Šliaupa: A Snowfall of salt
Centre Intermondes, La Rochelle, France
September 12 – November 2, 2024

 

Exhibition text by the curator Daniella Géo:

A Snowfall of salt, Paulius Šliaupa’s first solo exhibition in France, proposes a seeming contradiction that in fact implicates our inability to find balance. Nature is the essence – and condition – of (all) life. However, nature and our experience of it, Šliaupa’s major subjects, have been drastically estranged in modern global societies. The group of works on view at Centre Intermondes encourages a reflection on our relation and effect on the ecosystem, the pathways we take, and our very existence. All that having in mind the biosphere’s capacity to transform continuously, whether or not human’s life remains in the equation.

Born into a family of geologists and brought up in Barteliai, a hamlet in Lithuania’s countryside where he still lives part of the year, Šliaupa has developed intimacy with nature and the clear understanding that we, as part of nature ourselves, are vastly exceeded by it. In his work, particularly in his films, there is often a sense of both the sublime and of normalcy in human’s experience of nature. No matter how ordinary what is being observed, the artist creates awe-inspiring images that invite for an immersive involvement from the viewer, while gently implying our smallness amid the living organism that the Earth is. The artist is driven by a fascination for the magnitude of the world, the possibilities for wonder and ponder, and the freedom they bring. In this sense, the intangible and the spirituality associated with it, myths, and rituals – in nature and inspired by it – are as well important traits in the artist’s oeuvre. At the same time, taking up an integralist position that considers nature as a whole, as a system consisting of a diversity of networks and structures of which humanity is inseparable, the artist conveys unaffectedness – the unaffectedness typical of true connectedness, of close relationships, of what is inherent. 

The sensation of “going together with the world” that Šliaupa says to experiences when flying his camera drones is significant in the work Gaia (2020–2024), which is to great extent shot from above. The notion of ‘bird’s eye’ or ‘God’s view’ in film is here Earth’s own look at herself. Central to the exhibition, the video-projection evokes, as the title indicates, the myth of Gaia, goddess of the Earth or Earth itself, mother of all life, to whom the artist literally gives voice. Gaia, performed by Birutė Belada Tauterytė, calmly wanders through natural environments in (semi-)urban settings, contemplating and acting upon her findings. Realized in the vicinities of Barteliai, the suburbs of Vilnius (LT), and in the surroundings of La Rochelle and Île de Ré (FR), the video reveals measuredly chosen locations that, within their natural beauty, evince traces of human interventions ranging from the everyday to testimonies of our destructive being, such as remnants of war.  There is no judgment from Gaia though, no despair nor sorrow, but a declamation in fragmentary verses noting the states of affair and its many contradictions. Inspired by Donna Haraway’s philosophy and reflecting Šliaupa’s own standpoint, the soliloquy was composed by the artist partly utilising A.I., which in itself hints at our adamant distancing from nature, to say the least. Like all of Šliaupa’s works Gaia is mainly evocative, it does not take lightly the climate crisis we have caused neither does it take the position to discipline us. Gaia oozes a mystic, at times eerie tone – much owed to its soundscape – giving space to manifestations of the unknown. Whether Gaia (the Earth or the myth) meets her own demise or her (post-human) regenerative potential is on each one of us. The final Dada-like backward editing is timely in this regard.

Šliaupa’s practice is also tinged with some humor, or more precisely a touch of absurdity that not only suggests the irrationalis of our world but also the possibility to reimagine it. Sisyphus (2024) is a video installation that projects onto a spherical nautical buoy the image of a man walking infinitely. Is Sisyphus been punished, just like in Greek mythology, for his greed, tyranny, and murder of other living beings? Can’t he escape the destiny he has forged for himself? Or is he rather resilient – a quality that philosopher and Indigenous movement leader Ailton Krenak sees as necessary to postpone the end of the world – insisting on moving on, resisting, and never giving up?

 

In dialogue with the videos, the artist presents a selection of paintings and objects. The latter derives from Šliaupa’s brand new experimentations with 3D printing, following his interest in recent technologies (A.I., drone cameras, 3D scanning, etc.) and their entanglements with our life and the natural world in general. The series Critters (2024) takes each the shape of a marine specimen found dead, desiccated on the beaches where the artist was shooting during his residence at Centre Intermondes. The starfish, jellyfish, and sea urchin that struck Šliaupa as magical then have been somewhat transfigured through the machine and symbolically brought back to life. Not so much a relation to Mary Shelley’s novel, Critters are more fossil-like creatures from our time, appearing to speak to a future past.

One could say that Šliaupa works within the logic of (fictive) preservation of life forms from the present day, like a speculative conservation biologist or an archeologist from what lies ahead. And his paintings, the medium on which he was trained in his initial years, also respond to such an appreciation. They could be read as an attempt to assimilate and fix organic structures as well as natural phenomena resulting from the interaction of light. Quite bodily and textural his paintings border on sculpture, as if carved out from a glacier, a reef, a rock, or a moss field under the light of different points in time. 

Earth precedes and will likely outlast us should we, as individuals and as a society, not change our ecologic awareness. The exhibition A Snowfall of salt is also an invitation for us to define who we are in the equation, and who knows to reconnect with the Earth.

About the curator Daniella Géo

Daniella Géo is a Belgo-Brazilian researcher, lecturer and curator. Géo holds a PhD and a Master’s degree in Film and Audiovisual Studies from the Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris III. She has a special interest in the politics of representation and the role played by images in the construction of (common) sense, in particular those related to violence and prejudice. Her practice explores appropriation practices and the aesthetic use of non-artistic images, interdisciplinarity, dialogical and non-hegemonic perspectives, and the political potential of art.

Géo has served as curator at the 4e Biennale de Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo, and the 5e Biennale internationale de la Photographie et des Arts visuels de Liège, Belgium. Recent curatorial projects include the first Latin American retrospective of Roger Ballen, Transfigurações (Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro, Oscar Niemeyer Museum, Curitiba, Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo, Caixa Cultural, Brasília); the panorama of Charif Benhelima’s Polaroid work Imagem em Processo (Museum of Contemporary Art, Niterói, Oscar Niemeyer Museum, Curitiba – co-curatorship); Six Solo Exhibitions (Station Museum of Contemporary Art, FotoFest, Houston – co-curatorship); the group exhibitions TRANS(University of Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa), Álbum de Família (Centro de Arte Hélio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro); the experimental residence project Jean Katambayi Mukendi em Residência-Aberta (Casa França-Brasil, Rio de Janeiro), a collaboration with the socially engaged art project Children in the City, Foyer, Brussels, amongst others. She has lectured in symposia and seminars, such as DRC today: a look onto society through art (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro – curator), De-colonising Art, Education, History, Biblioteca Mário de Andrade, São Paulo; Mediating Past, Present, Future, Académie des Beaux-Arts, Kinshasa, DRC; Appropriation and re-contextualization of photographic images in contemporary art, INARRA- Grupo de Pesquisa Imagens, Narrativas e Práticas Culturais/PPCIS – Rio de Janeiro Estate Univerity, etc. Géo is a docent at the Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage, Rio de Janeiro.