Difficult Pasts. Connected Worlds

"33 MONSTERS", a novel by Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal is a collaboration with Jenny and Peter Zinovieff, Lucy Railton, Johanna Ruukholm and Varvara Toropkova. The installation in the National Gallery of Vilnius is the result of our research about Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal the novel she published in 1907 in Petersburg, first lesbian novel in the Russia. The novel will be published in autumn 2022, bilingual and illustrated.

Difficult Pasts. Connected Worlds With the beginning of Russia's war in Ukraine, the past has returned in Eastern Europe, changing from something distant into a present-day disaster for millions of people. The invasion that started in 2014 with Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk was often dismissed by the international community, but has now grown into a situation that is affecting the whole world. This war hits Eastern Europe most alarmingly, reviving many silences, unhealed wounds and unprocessed memories of the totalitarian past. "Difficult Pasts. Connected Worlds" includes works by artists from the three Baltic countries, Ukraine, Poland, Finland and the Netherlands. The experiences the works evoke are ones that are often forgotten or ignored, excluded from official histories. Artists included in the exhibition narrate those experiences through individual stories, while evoking broader layers of cultural memory. What is the place of these stories in the present? How could we integrate them in our understanding of history? What do they change in our perception of the world around us? Overcoming local and national borders, the exhibition calls for reflection on the relationships between difficult pasts and their impact today through the perspective of a shared history by opening dialogue, forging connections and foregrounding solidarities between the different difficult histories.

Curators: Ieva Astahovska, Margaret Tali, Eglė Mikalajūnė Participating artists: Anastasia Sosunova, Eléonore de Montesquiou, Jaana Kokko, Laima Kreivytė, Lia Dostlieva & Andrii Dostliev, Matīss Gricmanis & Ona Juciūtė, Quinsy Gario & Mina Ouaouirst, Paulina Pukytė, Ülo Pikkov, Vika Eksta, Zuzanna Hertzberg. Architect: Jonas Žukauskas Designer: Alexey Murashko The exhibition is organized by the Latvian Center for Contemporary Art and the National Gallery of Art (Lithuanian National Museum of Art)