The catalogue of the Lithuanian Pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, 2024.
Marija Teresė Rožanskaitė's paintings and Pakui Hardware's installations are connected by themes of medicine and control as well as natural, cosmic, and industrial landscapes. This project, produced by The Lithuanian National Museum of Art, brings together the distinct experiences of these artists belonging to different generations and explores the inflammation of (post)human bodies under today's economic and social conditions. It draws inspiration from Marya Rupa and Raj Patel's recent book Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice, which uses the concept of inflammation as a metaphor for the systemic harm being inflicted on humanity and the planet.
The publication's texts highlight how the combined presentation of Marija Teresė Rožanskaitė's and Pakui Hardware's practices weaves together agents, environments, and moments in crisis to offer a metabolic balance, with the aim to "cool" the burning human and planetary bodies.
Pakui Hardware is a name for collaborative artist duo Neringa Cerniauskaite and Ugnius Gelguda. Pakui Hardware refers to Pakui—special attendant of Hawaiian Goddess, a runner who could circle an island six times in a day, thus embodying velocity and mythology, and Hardware which stands for materiality, bodies, and resources.
The duo's work explores plasticity of bodies, their yet undiscovered potentials. They trace how diverse technologies expand, test and control these bodily promises. Hybrid materials that the artists employ correspond to hybrid bodies that surround us. These questions are analyzed through such examples as invasive and transformative relationship to bodies, automation, synthetic biology and new materiality.
Marija Teresė Rožanskaitė (1933–2007) was a Lithuanian artist, famous for her "medical" paintings: scenes of heart operations, x-ray laboratories and hospitals.
