'The bright tomorrows that never came', part of Frac's 'You are my mirror; series, references Lithuania's recent social and political history to broach the question of heritage, transmission, memory, commemoration, utopia-and, evidently between the lines, that of monumentality and anti-monumentality-through the encounter and dialogue between two artists representing different generations: Deimantas Narkevicius and Gintaras Didziapetris.
Deimantas Narkevicius, 'The Head', 2007. 35 mm film.
Each questions in his own fashion the articulation between the past and the present, between personal and collective history, as well as the fictional potential of historical images and testimonies. Their work and reflection have a particular resonance in the Lorraine region, its landscape scarred by history and punctuated by monuments marking wars, human loss and periods of annexation.
The splendor and misery of monuments erected in public spaces in order to 'commemorate' an event collectively, or dismantled, taken down after the collapse of the ideologies they served, and once the propaganda they embodied had lost its audience. Signs of pies in the sky, utopias which have not kept their promises, monuments of the Soviet era today merely exude an air of obsolescence, silence or a sort of 'aphasia'. The emptiness of public spaces devoid of these witnesses to totalitarian power is not enough, however, to erase memory and history.
This exhibition is part of the 'You are my mirror' events set up in Grand Est and Vilnius and presented as part of the European Cultural Season in France (July 1st - December 31, 2008), organized by the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs and the Ministry of Culture and Communication, with the support of the General Secretary of the French Presidency of the European Union, and organized by Culturesfrance.
Next:
15 November 2008 - 4 January 2009: Center of Contemporary Art - CAC, Vilnius, Lithuania
Collections without Borders IX. FOYER: Language and space at the border
FOJE: Kalba ir erdve pasienyje
Works from the collections of the Frac du Grand Est (list in preparation)
'YOU ARE MY MIRROR 2 : THE BRIGHT TOMORROWS THAT NEVER CAME'
Deimantas Narkevicius,
Gintaras Didziapetris
To 19 Oct 2008
Frac Lorraine
49 NORD 6 EST - Frac Lorraine
1bis rue des Trinitaires, Metz
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