Collaboration with Tarantula: Authors and Art

My friendship with ART magazine Tarantula: Authors and Art goes back more than a year. How many wonderful artists have been interviewed and texts written.

Today I want to write some of them down on a single sheet of paper and invite you to read them, because a good conversation with an artist or his/her work is always inspiring, uplifting and inviting to open up to the work itself.

Sculpture by French artist Marguerite Humeau, Photo by Kristina Aleksynaitė

Interviews

Showing the Invisible with Swedish artist Eva-Teréz

Artists Are Like Archeologists with Swedish artist Lotta Melin

Magical Worlds With No Limits with Lithuanian artist Rūta Matulevičiūtė

Fighting On The Art Field with Ukrainian artist Iryna Maksymova

Art Through Which Light Shines Ukrainian artist Daria Alyoshkina

Texts inspired by art

Planting A Garden In The Basement Of My Soul with Chilean artist Sandra Vasquez de la Horra

The Sweetest Sugar Is In Your Heart with American artist Andrea Chung

In Search Of God with photographer Nina Buesing

Returning To My Own Body text about my works

The Milk Of Pain And Salvation inspirations from the Venice Biennale

Art Inspired By The Blind Chocolate Tasting #1 we taste chocolate and create

"Before Leaving" was exhibited in the center of Vilnius

One of my works was exhibited in the centre of Vilnius, on Lukiškių Square.

"Before Leaving" has become part of "Art Without a Roof" and is on display alongside other artists' works around the city. The Open Art Gallery is a wonderful opportunity for art to slip out of buildings and be even more visible.

All works can be found and purchased at ww.menasbestogo.lt.

Tarantula: Authors and Art interview: I Want To See Me

This interview by Karen Grace was reprinted from the Tarantula: Authors and Art platform https://tarantulaauthorsandart.substack.com/

On a sunny day in June, photographer Kristina Aleksynaitè and I sat down for a good chat while our children ran around in circles and her husband Karolis made us a lovely lunch.  Dear reader, I wish you could have joined us (perhaps someday we’ll start doing interviews as podcasts, who knows!) but grab a cup of tea (my usual) or coffee (Kristina’s) and read along... you’re in for a treat.

TARANTULA: So happy to be with you today, and on the summer solstice no less!  For our readers at Tarantula what can you tell me about your journey to becoming a photographer? When did you fall in love with photography?

Kristina: I guess the beginning was my mom taking me to exhibitions. You know we lived in the Soviet era and so much was forbidden. You couldn't see a lot of art in your daily life so my mom would go to some galleries or museums. She was very interested in it always, so she started taking me to galleries and somehow we ended up often in the photography exhibitions.

So when did you first pick up a camera?

I was, 15 or 16 when I got my first. Everybody got film cameras in those days. I went to after school classes and we learned to do everything by ourselves. We would photograph, we would go to the dark room and do that whole process. It was long time ago, we didn’t have digital yet... so I started but you know, I chose a different profession - I forgot about photography.

But you became a journalist. Was there any photography involved in being a journalist?

When I was a journalist I had to find the picture, but usually I would ask some photographers for what I needed. I think how I started photographing professionally was as a culture journalist I would go to different events to write and to photograph a little bit.

So you were doing your own photography for the stories that you were writing?

Yes, and one time I went to Moscow to Eurovision! It was the main event, and I did really bad photos. I got this good camera from my editor and I couldn't use it properly. I used it like an automatic, and it had these beautiful good lenses. And you know, when I came back, it was all blurry and the shutter speed wasn't right. And it was dark, a lot of emotions, you know. So I decided I should learn! That was it, I went to some courses, and that's how it really started.

When I had my kids I experimented taking photos with them. But I'm a self-learner. I didn't go to art school, or to university. So I learned everything by myself or with some small courses. After that, when I was at home with my kids, and I was wondering, should I come back to writing but I noticed in myself that I enjoyed photographing more, and then I saved the writing for later.  Somehow it just pushed all writing to the side, and photography went in front. It happened very naturally.

You wrote about how there are almost no pictures of you as a kid, and that’s hard.  So I wonder, how does photography fit into your life with your kids?  How does that work for you?

Well, at first I was obsessed with photographing them. Since I didn't have my pictures I always wondered, if I'm missing something, you know? I wonder, how was I? What did my cheeks look like? I don't know that because I can count my pictures on my two hands, and they’re from far away. You want to know yourself, and from all the stories, my mother or father tells, it's very different. I want to see me. So I started photographing everything, all the things. But suddenly after about three years I lost all my data. My little one just dropped the hard drive. Oh. And it was so traumatic for me! Of course we live in such a world where so many grandmothers photograph, right? And we had done some photo shoots of them. But, so many were gone – like from when I gave birth! Oh it was so hard, but after that I started looking differently at the pictures and that maybe I don't need so many.  I don't need, you know, 100 pictures from one birthday, right? Just a few of them. I started to appreciate it more.

Still, I want them to see different perspectives on their childhood. Real life is not like when you do a photo shoot and everybody looks perfect in the picture. I want to photograph them from different angles, different sides. It doesn't have to be very pretty. I don't edit pictures of my kids or daily life. It's very important for me. Not so beautiful, you know? Sometimes we have dirty dishes and hair like we just got out of bed.  I like it not dressed up.  School portraits are fine and that's enough, but it's not our life.  I like that I'm creating some kind of story of them, like I saw them, and I'm really seeing them in their childhood. Also, they are photographing. Selfies for them are fun, or they are filming. So it's their story - they can recreate and remember something.

Photography is such an interesting piece of modern memory, right? When I look back in my memory about my childhood, I very frequently see events through a picture, that somebody else took. My memory is so closely related to the photos. When I look back, I don't see the things that happened through my own eyes. I'm seeing it through the photograph of what somebody else saw of the moment. There are different kinds of memories like that. But I'm also remembering it as a kid, looking at the photo albums, and hearing the stories about what happened. Photography adds in another layer of how to hold onto those memories. It's different thinking about how you personally experience it versus how other people see you in that moment.

Right. In this moment, here’s something I wasn't seeing, or that's what it would feel like to see him... I was a very quiet kid, never caused problems, I sat quietly and played... and there is this experience of being you. My parents were working a lot, so my brother and I were quite independent - it was quite difficult to experience. So my kids, I want them to feel, to see, to be seen.  I spend a lot of time with them.  I asked my mom, why didn't they take a picture? But they just didn't think about it...

Kristina Aleksynaitè, from the series God’s Promise

It was a very complicated time. Absolutely.  I know you're a meditator. And so I wonder how photography does or doesn't fit with your meditative practice? Is it in any way a meditation to take a photograph?

Yeah, it is. I started TM - Transcendental Meditation, two years ago. So I'm noticing of course that I'm becoming more calm, and more calm in photographing. I changed my process of photographing. I went from digital, to film so everything slowed down. Before pushing the button you have to look for an angle, to be quiet, because you cannot run around and do film, right?

Right, it's not like digital where you can just take 10 and decide the best one.

I realize I'm very tired of doing photo shoots, photographing a lot of people or portraits, or for magazines. You work with stylists, with makeup artists, with hairdressers. You have to organize everything, and you run around and photograph. After a meditation though you see around what is interesting and you know, it's good, to look for a moment and wait for it. And it's not so nervous or not so hectic a process. Later you appreciate these pictures more and you see, when you come to the process in a more quiet and meditative state, the pictures become more beautiful and they have something deeper in them.

So I guess my perspective changed. And of course my photography changed a lot. Before I had my own portrait studio, and now I moved more to art, and even portraits I do now with kids are very different. I don't need so many colors, I don't need so much contrast. I like more natural.

So you're doing mostly black and white.

Yes, it's from my childhood. I remember the photographs I saw in galleries with my mom. They always were black and white. Also I guess it's because, when we moved to our home, I was six years old, and it was a very gray house. We had not so much furniture, and the floors were gray, cement I think.  I would sweep and play - I would water it and watch the dust go up. Oh, it was quite interesting. We lived in such a gray, gray house I remember. It was so minimalistic, but in the same time, it was very beautiful. It's quite empty, but it's quite beautiful! Spacious and beautiful. I don't like a lot of things around. Very simple. Very few. Because when it's a lot I get tired. It's overwhelming and I cannot concentrate in too many things. Maybe that's why.

Kristina Aleksynaitè

Wow, that beauty really stayed with you. I wonder what else you can tell me about your process?  As in, technically, how do you do the self portraits? The artfully wrapped, wet gauze, your eyes are closed... you must have a remote, yes? And you still have to compose the image while the camera is over there somewhere. Yes? And all with film?

Yeah. But digital, not with film.

So you can take it and look and take it and look... but composing the picture? And you, while you're in it and...

...and it gets cold. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. (laughs)

So you're, wet, you're wrapped, in gauze, and you're naked? (laughs)

And it’s slippery! It's not so easy. (so much laughter!) Yeah. It may not be very easy at all. Okay, so it's a long process. Sometimes I get frustrated, so I have to stop it to meditate a little bit. I just see what is going on, you know, because I have to have the exact angle. I just appreciate that.

That would be a very complicated!

Yes. It's complicated! But you know I thought I just have to do it. I don't wait for inspiration. I just go and I see what I get this day. Sometimes you don't get anything.  It doesn't look good or the light's not right.

So when you go to take a picture do you have ideas in your head about, well, here's the experiment I'm going to try today? Or do you have a picture in your head of what it is that you're hoping to get?

It's all an experiment, yes!  When I started, I just took a picture. That’s how it started in this “Before Leaving” series. I was just making self-portraits during quarantine. It was a series of 40 days of photographing myself, with whatever things that were around. I photographed myself and I was noticing the feeling I had - like frustration - so I would go to the bath and take pictures with the thing I have. And one day I took gauze.  I didn't know what to expect - I just started putting this gauze on me. It was very sculptural, and I saw that it was a very beautiful sculpture.  And it said a lot, a lot of things.

I saw myself, very vulnerable and that's what I was, because I was just about to move to another country and it was very painful for me. Leaving it all, like I was in the ground, and then I thought I will stay in between forever. I saw everything in these pictures, I saw me as a mom and also all the things I've been, and I saw all that I'm experiencing. This gauze just helped me to express all this on film. We usually see this body or, you know, this face, but I didn't want it. I wanted something in between. Something that could let some ideas come and to show how it feels.

Yeah. Absolutely. Because the gauze is really transformative, right? I mean, the body is a sculpture, but when you put the gauze over it with the water, it definitely makes it more sculptural.

And more powerful expressions. You just feel the heart beating or I can feel the vulnerability. Somebody’s shapes, just talks about everything, you know? Because we have everything in our body. It stays with us, like in us we have all this memory. You know, I don't have all these pictures of me from childhood, but I'm still this child. All of us are. I can see in my, I don’t know maybe hands, but sometimes I see in my body that I'm like a child this moment. It’s still with me.

Kristina Aleksynaitè, from the series “Before Leaving”

It's the same hands, right?

Same. Yes. It's the same hand. So I see this kid, who doesn't have any pictures, but now I can see, like a grown up, this kid...

And I wanted to know, to memorize this moment and what is going on with me, because it's a huge change. I was afraid of it. Immigration.  So like a sculpture, you just memorize the shape of that moment because after a few days it'll change... I thought I will do a tryptic: before, staying, and leaving again. All the changes, you know?

Kristina Aleksynaitè, Stockholm

Let’s focus on the staying for now... I know you've said that you are really loving being in Stockholm. After all the fear and being nervous about migrating, now you're here and it seems like it's wonderful for you.

Oh my God. Transformative!  Imagine how big a change it looked for me because the first time I went to the capital from the second city where I was born, I was 17!  I mean, I didn't travel at all. Can you imagine? Later of course, when I was a student, I traveled.  The first time I flew on a plane, I was 22!

Wow! When did you go to the United States?

I was 23. It was the second time I flew. So you know how the world opened for me? I was raised in a very simple family and I never even dreamed about it. I was alright, sitting in the garden with family... Then I thought when I was living in Vilnius or traveling around somewhere for vacations, I thought: I'm a citizen of the world... But when I came here to Stockholm and I just met all these beautiful people in the international community... it's a very different world to open up!  All the galleries we have here, I can go, every week to a new gallery and I can see something new! In Vilnius, you know everything.

Also what happened, I have more courage here. It looks like nobody knows me so I can experiment and do crazy things. This distance gives you self-confidence.  I wouldn't dare show some pictures there. But here? Yeah. A different environment or some inspiration, I guess. And the self-confidence just grew up, you know? It's still growing. But I guess this is different. They say you cannot be a prophet in your own land...

My last question is just about what projects are you working on now or planning for the future?

I'm collecting a lot of things from the kids, teeth and hair, precious things, precious, secret, sacred things, you know, so I'm collecting and I have a lot of stuff, so I will photograph them. I want to, because they will always be with me but we cannot hold and carry on all these things forever. I thought I might photograph them somehow very special and then I will bury them in the countryside where we have a house. I think I shouldn't keep them. I have a lot of things, you know, but I'm holding on so I will try to leave it.

Also, I want to do a portrait series from the international community and the friends I've got here. I wanted to call it moving mothers, but I don't think that’s it. Something about mothers, who meet? The kids all go to the same classes, so you make friendships. But usually these families are expats who are moving from one country to another and so I want to show this relationship somehow.  I want to express this relationship that is very sensitive because after few years... you have a friend and you know, you will lose them. They'll be moving away. You won't lose it, but you know, it's very temporary.

Yeah. It's a very unique experience to the expat community.

Nobody talks about it, you know?  But so many people are living like this.

Let’s not talk about the leaving part… but I can't wait to see what you do next!

Thank you. You will see yourself in this picture.

I look forward to it all. Thank you!

Returning To My Own Body

I’m sharing my text on knowing the body through its use as an art object. This work was published in the art magazine Tarantula: Authors and Arts.

Talking about the body was not common in my family where I grew up. And it couldn't have been any other way.

My earliest memories of my childhood were shaped by the Soviet era, not to mention my parents, who spent half of their lives there. The naked body did not exist in that period. Neither did sex. No one talked about the body, let alone the abuse that women were subjected to because it was considered their own fault. Or about homosexual relationships. All that "did not exist".

No wonder that the first exhibitions I saw are so deeply etched in my memory. I remember the naked bodies, the sand, something secret, unknown,  wicked. The second memory is of the photographer's father's eternal death. I see the old man's bony chin, his beard that has barely grown back, his jaws that have fallen in, and the whole of him, lying in bed.

I took a similar photo a couple of months ago, after my grandmother died. Although she has passed away, she has retained a kind of grandeur, beauty, and uniqueness that she had throughout her life. Her body was so unrecognizable, but hiding under a very blue dress, it spoke not in form but in substance.

Those rare trips out on the town with my mother to visit a museum were always a surprise. I was so uncomfortable, but so curious. All of a sudden, my mother, a woman suffocated by the Soviet era, would come alive when she found herself in an exhibition. In this way, perhaps without realizing it herself, she opened up my imagination, which eventually blossomed into maturity.

Discovering My Own Body

The strangest thing is that I have absolutely no photos of myself as a child. Living in the poor conditions of the time, my parents didn't think it was important, so we never had framed photos in our house. Just a few of me and my brother in an empty album. So I basically do not know what I looked like as a child, although I remember myself from a very early age - 1.5 years.

Even though I was relatively well-liked and accepted, I always felt a certain discomfort, as if my body, although beautiful, was not listening to me. As if it and I were two different entities.

From the series “God’s promise”

Until quarantine came to all our homes. Unable to create in my photo studio and forced to spend  endless time with my family between four walls, I began to suffocate in every sense. My body no longer listened to me. I couldn't sleep, the food became unpalatable, I wanted to break free from some kind of limitation, but I couldn't. Just like all of us around the world.

I realized that I have to create under any conditions, with the tools I have today. My body and the things it touched were closer to me.

I started the series with a self-portrait. After a day of worries, I asked my family to go out for a walk in the city. I was tired. I had no idea what the work was supposed to be about. I took a bath. I crawled into the water and I realized it was going to be about my image. I'm talking about fear. The fear of the unknown these days, the feeling of insecurity, nakedness, vulnerability.

I have been afraid of going underwater without covering my nose since I was a little girl. I submerge while holding the phone. I got scared, the water got into my palate, I coughed.

And slowly, day by day, a series of 40 photographs about the body and feelings was born. The body was my closest choice.

So I started to explore my identity first, and eventually, after many photos, I started to feel a connection with the whole of humanity and the common experiences we have.

Fake Body

When we see endless images of naked bodies in the media every day. Often beautiful, eroticised, perfect, designed to please someone.

I also find Instagram photos interesting. The fake reality, the quest for perfection. The desire to please. The desire to stay young forever. The desire to show our vitality through sexuality. Is this photography? It speaks a lot to me, too. I go through people's profiles and I see them in real life - sad, embarrassed, with families, and completely different. Just like my life, which is not at all reflected on Instagram.

Sometimes I also use a "beautifying" filter and immediately get a few friend requests, questions about how I'm doing? Then I delete it and I want to be non-superficial, thoughtful, open to the core again. Until the next time, when I want to play outside of myself again.

These fake games are exhausting. I feel tired after such experiments. Forgetting myself. I always want to go back to my home, I always want to go back to my real body. Virtual reality will never replace the truth.

The feminine part is screaming that this is wrong, that it is violence against us women. The erotic portrayal of the 'perfect' woman, which has been perpetuated by men throughout history makes me angry and I no longer want to be part of it.

The Body Is The Context

Finally, I want to return to poetry, to music,  to nature. To the real. No matter how tired, flabby, disheveled the body is, it is a tree with all its splits, its earth-covered roots, its poisonous, yellowing leaves. The body may smell of divine roses and swamp mud. And still it will be beautiful.

One picture I saw in the “Fotografiska Museum” in Stokholm  is deeply embedded in my memory. It is Julia’s SH's photo of three women's bodies, covered in flour like loaves of bread, reminded me of my mother's swollen thighs, her hugs before school, her sweat in the weary garden, and her endless love.  These bodies speak to me a thousand times louder and closer than any work of art with a perfectly sculpted figure.

I always return to the artist Violeta Bubelytė. She  is known as the first Lithuanian photographer to turn her lens on her nude self. How beautiful. So deep. Full-bodied. How much has been said.

Sometimes I'm afraid that my body says too much, I still want to hide, but I look at Marina’s Abramović’s work and I see the violence she has experienced and how she immerses herself in a certain state where she frees herself, without blaming anybody, without pointing fingers at her abusers, only talking about herself.

One of Lithuania's most interesting artists, Svajonė and Paulius Stanikai, known as "SetP Stanikas", use the body in a straightforward, even blasphemous way. Sex acts, distorted degraded faces, gross body parts... The straight truth about us.

I'm flipping through the book “Girl on Girl” by Charlotte Jansen and I hear all these women's voices  talking about issues that are important to them. It is shocking, repulsive, eroticising, smile-inducing, some iconic, some realistic. All different.

For example, having the courage to laugh at their bodies makes me feel vulnerable and it exposes my sensitive body parts also.

The Transcendence To Essence

In the series "Before Leaving," I photograph myself being vulnerable at the present moment in the face of my changes - migration, lost identity and existential questions.

With the scraps of gauze I create a sculpture of myself. It is as if she freezes and immortalises my body under the wet texture of the material and looks from the side, asking what kind of  sculpture-human being I am today. It’s like stopping a moment, as it goes so fast and noticing myself clearly. It’s a process of self-knowledge, the purification, the transcendence to essence.

From the series ‘Before Leaving’

Know yourself, see yourself, don't lie to yourself, meet yourself. Sometimes it seems to me that by using bodies in art, women are healing their traumas. Knowing again, discovering, reclaiming their bodies. And if it helps other women to experience the same thing when they look at the artwork, isn't it worth it to keep creating openly?

After three years of photographing myself I can say I have found peace with my body. I don't put so much effort into pleasing others, I want to please myself first. I allow it to be imperfect. I ask my body more and more often - are you okay in this situation or is it time to get out of here. And it always has the best answer.

Today I have a lot of photos of myself and I am not sorry that no one captured “that” childhood. I know it today, through my own body, because it remembers everything.