Losing Your Virginity: Feminist Curating and Artistic Practices in Lithuania

What is the role of a feminist curator and artist in relation to institutional critique and activism? In 2004–2006 the Contemporary Art Centre (Vilnius) presented a series of personal exhibitions entitled Emission. It was an institutional attempt to create a canon of contemporary Lithuanian art. Of thirteen artists presented, only two were women. In the following year, Kristina Inčiūraitė curated Among Us, an exhibition of six women artists, at the Contemporary Art Centre. Was this a feminist response to the first show? I will analyse feminist informed exhibitions and recent feminist interventions as mis(s)appropriation of institutional power, master narratives and critical discourse in contemporary Lithuanian art.

Laima Kreivyte is an art critic and curator based in Vilnius. She lectures at the Vilnius Academy of Arts and the Gender Studies Centre of Vilnius University. From 1997 to 2007 she was an editor of the visual arts section of Lithuanian cultural weekly 7 meno dienos. The she has curated numerous exhibitions including Baltic Mythologies III, the Prague Biennale (together with Luigi Fassi, 2007), 1907:2007. Private Conversations (2007), and Suspended E-motion: Contemporary Finnish Art (2006).