Golden Lion for Best National Participation to Lithuania for the experimental spirit of the Pavilion and its unexpected treatment of national representation. The jury was impressed with the inventive use of the venue to present a Brechtian opera as well as the Pavilion’s engagement with the city of Venice and its inhabitants. Sun & Sea (Marina) is a critique of leisure and of our times as sung by a cast of performers and volunteers portraying everyday people.
Special mention as National Participation to Belgium. Unsparing in its humour, the Belgian Pavilion offered an alternative view of the under-recognised aspects of social relations across Europe. The uncanny staging of a series of fictional characters in the form of mechanised puppets based on folkloric stereotypes allow the Pavilion to act on several registers, while creating two if not more parallel realities.
Description of project by Miles Evans PR
Sun & Sea (Marina)
For the 58th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia (Venice, Italy), the Lithuanian Pavilion transforms the interior of a historic quayside building within the Marina Militare complex into an artificially lit beach scene replete with sand and all the paraphernalia associated with seaside holidays.
In the unique setting of the Marina Militare, located adjacent to the Arsenale, and which until now has never previously been used during the Biennale Arte, artists Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė and Lina Lapelytė present a durational opera performance, Sun & Sea (Marina). While initially appearing light-hearted, this highly innovative take on the operatic form - described as “counter-monumental” and “anti-baroque theatre” - addresses some of the most pressing ecological issues of our time. Presented by Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts, Sun & Sea (Marina) is curated by Lucia Pietroiusti, Curator of General Ecology and Live Programmes at the Serpentine Galleries, London.
With a bird's-eye view of the performance from a mezzanine gallery above the stage, audiences look down on the assembled characters who appear as a typical group of holiday-goers, of varying ages, from different walks of life, attired in colourful bathing suits and sunbathing under the full glare of the sun over a mosaic of towels. Surveying this fleshy tableau vivant from their sun-like vantage point, audiences observe the frailty of the human condition. As the libretto unfolds we are introduced to each individual in turn, through sung performances (performed whilst lying down) that reveal private preoccupations, ranging from trivial concerns about sunburn and plans for future vacations to nagging fears of environmental catastrophe, which surface as though from the depths of the characters’ troubled consciousness. Frivolous micro-stories on this crowded beach give way to broader, more serious topics and grow into a global symphony, a universal human choir addressing planetary scale issues; tired bodies offering a metonym for a tired planet.
Specially adapted for the 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Sun & Sea (Marina) is the first version of this piece in English, adapted as a durational performance. The original version of Sun & Sea (Marina) was produced by Neon Realism.
Daisy Hildyard, author of the internationally acclaimed non-fiction book, The Second Body, a reflection the way our ecological impact extends far beyond what we consider our physical body - gives the opening talk during the vernissage, on 10 May.
This is not the first collaboration for the three artists, who have known each other since teenage years growing up in Kaunas, the second largest city in Lithuania. Their contemporary opera Have a Good Day! - created between 2011 and 2013 and still touring the world - won six international awards in Europe. It has toured more than twenty festivals and was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and the Lithuanian National Radio. In 2018 at the Golden Cross awards in Lithuania the artists were awarded Borisas Dauguvietis prize for their innovative and original ideas. In their collaborations, the artists pay special attention to the relationship between documentary and fiction, reality and poetry as well as the overlap of theatre, music and visual arts. Themes that appear in Sun & Sea (Marina) have run through the artists’ works, such as Rugile Barzdžiukaitė’s award-winning film essay, Acid Forest, which replaced the human’s filmic viewpoint with that of birds, or in Have a Good Day!, an opera in which complex questions such as gender, ageing and labour were addressed through individual checkout counter workers’ songs, all offering an insight into their everyday lives and preoccupations.
This project marks the second time that Vilnius Academy of Art’s Nida Art Colony has produced Lithuania’s Pavilion in Venice. In 2015, during the 56th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, the Colony presented Dainius Liškevičius’ project Museum. The head of Nida Art Colony, art critic Dr Rasa Antanavičiūtė, serves as the Commissioner of the national pavilion together with Honorary Commissioner Jean-Baptiste Joly, founder of Akademie Schloss Solitude, where the development of Sun & Sea began in 2016. Sun & Sea (Marina) follows the Swamp Pavilion, the Lithuanian pavilion for the Biennale Architettura 2018, which also focused on environmental issues.
The presentation in Venice features a special-edition vinyl catalogue, conceived by Åbäke and featuring texts by Marie Darrieussecq, Daisy Hildyard, Monika Kalinauskaite, Lucia Pietroiusti and more. Visual identity by Goda Budvytytė.
