On September 3, on the eve of the queer festival \u201cKreiv\u0117s\u201d, Vilnius queer gallery \u201ci\u0161girsti\u201d opens a solo exhibition by photographer Volung\u0117 Au\u0161ra Gri\u0161konyt\u0117, \u201cSluts. Home Archive\u201d, which will be open on the days when the \u201ci\u0161girsti\u201d reading room is open until October 1.<\/p>\n
The year 1999. An apartment on a certain street in Vilnius, walls covered with shabby wallpaper. Bright-coloured dresses, vivid shawls and piercing, playful, almost self-alluring glances. Flowers and patterns imitating tiger\u2019s fur, gleaming high-heels on hairy legs. Cigarettes burning in a holder and a resounding echo of laughter shielded by the home\u2019s walls that makes the sheer curtains flutter. It is hardly something to be found in the repositories of official archives or the files describing them.<\/p>\n
The exhibition by Volung\u0117 Au\u0161ra Gri\u0161konyt\u0117 delves into the archive of the artist\u2019s photographic series \u2018Sluts\u2019 (\u2018Kek\u0161\u0117s\u2019, 1999\u20132003). The title \u2018Sluts\u2019 came intuitively \u2013 it was merely a word that kept ringing during the act of photographing, but it captures the impossibility of a peaceful queer life at the time as well. \u2018Sluts\u2019 are people from the margins, people whom society refused to accept. Volung\u0117 portrayed her own surroundings and very close friends, their fluid games with constantly crossdressing gender identity, attempting to break free from rigid social norms. The photographs, shot more than twenty years ago, take us to the past home of the artist and her friends, because only there did such forms of self-expression \u2013 usually pushed out of public life \u2013 seem possible. In a society that was already independent but still rather narrow-minded about personal freedom, public space for queer people was synonymous with selective hostility and a sense of being unsafe.<\/p>\n
The photographs in the series are intuitive reflections on imposed social norms, fluid identities, (in)visibility and something precious that needed to be hidden away\u2026 Joy. In the realities of harsh everyday life, a safe space was created from what was available. In the photographs of Volung\u0117, the safety veil was patched together from old lace and temporary folds of horticultural fleece, sincere friendships and performative plays. A prettier life thus composed within the domestic environment not only provided an escape, but also functioned as a support system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On September 3, on the eve of the queer festival \u201cKreiv\u0117s\u201d, Vilnius queer gallery \u201ci\u0161girsti\u201d opens a solo exhibition by photographer Volung\u0117 Au\u0161ra Gri\u0161konyt\u0117, \u201cSluts….","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/festivaliskreives.lt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/festivaliskreives.lt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/festivaliskreives.lt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/festivaliskreives.lt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/festivaliskreives.lt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5319"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/festivaliskreives.lt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5478,"href":"https:\/\/festivaliskreives.lt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5319\/revisions\/5478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/festivaliskreives.lt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/festivaliskreives.lt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/festivaliskreives.lt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}