JULIJA FOMINA 250 How to Represent the Present? Constructing the Notion of ‘the Contemporary’ in the Lithuanian Art Exhibitions of the Last Decade of the Twentieth Century JULIJA FOMINA This article addresses the theoretical concept of ‘the contemporary’ and its manifestations in the exhibitions of Lithuanian contemporary art of the last decade of the twentieth century. ‘Contemporary’ has a variety of meanings and has for a while been widely discussed by art historians, philosophers and curators. Some of them claim that it refers to the new historical period that started in 1989, while others say that it is a specific discourse, constantly (re)defined by various agents of the field of art attempting to represent the present. Both sides agree that exhibitions of contemporary art are crucial in producing the meanings of the present. The article presents a survey of several large-scale exhibitions of Lithuanian contemporary art that formed the notions of the contemporary in the 1990s and were organised by major Lithuanian art institutions: the Contemporary Art Centre and the Soros Centre for Contemporary Art (1993–1999). The particular focus is on the curatorial framing of shows, which is important in establishing different interpretations of the notion of contemporaneity. Since around the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, thinkers and practitioners of contemporary art have been discussing the notion of ‘the con- temporary’ or ‘contemporaneity’.1 Despite the seemingly obvious reference to the present, this notion is multi-faceted. The variety of its meanings is related to the 1 For discussions and different views please see the following magazines and articles: E-flux journal 2009, no. 11 and no. 12, http://www.e-flux.com/journal/11/ and http://www.e-flux.com/journal/12/ (accessed 10 September 2017), also October 2009, no. 130 and A. Alberro, Periodizing Contemporary Art. – Theory in Contemporary Art since 1985. 2nd ed. Eds. Z. Kocur, S. Leung. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012, pp. 67–73. The concept of the contemporary has been outlined in the following books and exhibition catalogues: Antinomies of Art and Culture: Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity. Eds. T. Smith, O. Enwezor, N. Condee. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008; T. Smith, What is Contemporary Art? Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009; The Global Contemporary and the Rise of New Art Worlds. Eds. H. Belting, A. Buddensieg, P. Weibel. Karlsruhe: ZKM, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2013; Contemporary Art: 1989 to the Present. Eds. A. Dumbadze, S. Hudson. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013; Aesthetics and Contemporary Art. Eds. A. Avannesian, L. Skrebowski. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2011; P. Osborne, Anywhere or Not at All: Philosophy of Contemporary Art. London: Verso, 2013; C. Bishop, Radical Museology, or, What’s ‘Contemporary’ in Museums of Contemporary Art? London: König, 2013; Former West: Art and the Contemporary after 1989. Eds. M. Hlavajova, S. Sheikh. Utrecht: BAK, Cambridge, London: MIT Press, 2016.  How to Represent the Present? 251 numerous ways of perceiving, imagining and conceptualising the present moment. Along with theoretical discussions, a crucial role in shaping and testing different meanings of the contemporary is played by exhibitions, which also became a sep- arate object of study for art historians. However, a lot of exhibition history studies tend to focus on global precedents, while some exhibitions that were important in the discourse of contemporaneity on the local scale are still underestimated. This article presents the latter cases: shows of Lithuanian contemporary art that were among the first attempts to construct the notions of the contemporary in the 1990s, but were not thoroughly investigated in this regard and so far have been acknowl- edged by Lithuanian art historians as purely ideological practices that expressed power positions of the new art institutions.2 Annual exhibitions organised by the Soros Centre for Contemporary Art (SCCA) in Lithuania in 1993–1999 and the exhibition Lithuanian Art 1989–1999: The Ten Years, organised by the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) in 1999 were notable events in the Lithuanian art life of the last decade of the twentieth century. They had high attend- ance figures, triggered lively discussions in the professional and popular press, and their catalogues still serve as important resources of the history of Lithuanian con- temporary art. Some participants of these exhibitions, now well-established art- ists, still list these events in their curriculum vitae as important starting points of their careers.3 The institutions that organised these shows were also important in the art scene on both local and international levels, and collaborated closely.4 In the Lithuanian field of art they are still perceived as close allies that supported and pro- moted similar artists and projects. In other words, they shared the same views of the contemporary.5 Analysis of the curatorial framing of these exhibitions – selec- tion criteria of the artists and the artworks, and ways of conceptualising them both 2 D. Citvarienė, Ideologiniai Lietuvos meno diskurso pokyčiai XX a. paskutiniajame dešimtmetyje [The ideological changes of Lithuanian art discourse in the 1990s]. PhD diss., Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas. Kaunas, 2008; S. Trilupaitytė, Apžvalginių dailės parodų reorganizavimo tendencijos Lietuvoje paskutiniame deš. [Tendencies of reorganization of survey exhibitions in Lithuania in the last decade]. – Dailė, muzika ir teatras valstybės gyvenime: 1918–1998. [Art, music and theatre in the life of the state: 1918–1998]. Ed. I. Pleikienė. Vilnius: Vilniaus dailės akademija, Lietuvos muzikos ir teatro akademija, 1998, pp. 62–73; S. Trilupaitytė, Menininkų institucijos vėlyvuoju sovietmečiu: Lietuvos dailininkų sąjunga ir Atgimimas [Art institutions in the late Soviet period: Lithuanian Artists’ Union and ‘rebirth]’. – Lietuvos menas permainų laikais. [Lithuanian art in the times of transitions]. (Kultūrologija 9.) Ed. A. Aleksandravičiūtė. Vilnius: Kultūros, filosofijos ir meno institutas, 2002, pp. 410–427; S. Trilupaitytė, Socialinių lūžių ir tęstinumų problema XX a. devintojo dešimtmečio pabaigos-dešimtojo dešimtmečio pirmos pusės Lietuvos dailės gyvenime. [The problem of social turning-points in the life of Lithuanian fine art at the end of the 9th and beginning of the 10th decades of the twentieth century.] – Formų difuzijos XX a. dailėje ir architektūroje [Diffusions of forms in fine arts and architecture of the twentieth century]. (Acta Academiae Artium Vilnensis 43.) Eds. A. Andriulytė, A. čepauskaitė, V. Liutkus. Vilnius: Vilniaus dailės akademijos leidykla, 2006, pp. 225–234. 3 Among them – Deimantas Narkevičius, Artūras Raila, Gediminas Urbonas and others. 4 The CAC director Kęstutis Kuizinas was a board member of the SCCA, most annual exhibitions of the SCCA took place in the exhibition halls of the CAC. The last annual exhibition Twilight in 1998 was curated by the CAC curators. SCCA officially stopped its activities in 1999 and its archive functions as a part of the Art Information Centre of the National Gallery of Art in Vilnius. 5 This is also a reason for the major critique of these institutions for some of Lithuanian art critics and practitioners. They tend to think that this ‘alliance’ made a lot of harm to the ‘natural’ formation of the local scene of contemporary art, as, for instance, certain artists were not then included in the art discourse and due to this their positions are now weaker, they often perceive themselves as ‘the outsiders’ of the so-called ‘mainstream’. This view is very clearly represented in the following book: R. Diržys, K. Šapoka, Alytaus avangardizmas: nuo gatvės meno iki visuotinio psichodarbininkų (meno) streiko [Alytus’ avant-gardism: from street-art to total psychoworkers (art) strike]. Vilnius: Kitos knygos, 2014.  JULIJA FOMINA 252 verbally and visually in exhibition displays – show that, in fact, the notion of con- temporaneity that they constructed had a variety of meanings. Research of these exhibitions applying the concept of the contemporary can add valuable insights regarding the ways curators and artists perceived and represented the present and can possibly enrich the writing of the history of contemporary Lithuanian art in the 1990s. The contemporary: between theory and practice According to the art critic and historian Claire Bishop, the majority of theoretical definitions of the contemporary can be divided into two groups: it’s used to desig- nate either a new historical period or discursively.6 While both of these approaches highlight globalisation as the main feature of the contemporary, they differ in the perception of the structure of the present time and emphasise different categories that help to conceptualise it. The contemporary, as the most recent, still continuing period of art, started in 1989, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and other significant geopolitical events world- wide.7 The collapse of the Soviet Union and communist regimes all over the world started the new historical era: that of globalisation. In the contemporary period, the structure of the field of art, previously centred around the Western countries, has significantly changed: new geopolitical entities, such as Eastern Europe and the Balkan countries, appeared on the map, and the artistic practices of these new enti- ties were ‘rediscovered’. A bit later this map expanded to include Asian, African and Middle East countries. Cities in Western Europe and the USA have lost their posi- tions as the centres of the art world. Instead, the number of the global centres of art has significantly risen and the nature of borders, travel and the character of the global economy have also drastically changed.8 The art historian Julian Stallabrass has wittily noted that after the collapse of the communist regime in Eastern Europe ‘the art world really became a world … and it became plausible to conceive of the art world less as a constellation of fixed centres and more as a series of flows from one locale to another’.9 In the global age travelling has become one of the most impor- tant practices, closely linked to one of the main characteristics of this epoch: the large (and continually rising) number of periodical exhibitions (biennials, trienni- als, etc.) all over the globe. During the contemporary period, the importance and status of exhibitions has also risen significantly. The exhibition has become one of the main forms of rep- resentation of the new art, as well as a creative medium. Curatorship has turned into a creative practice in its own right, comparable to the act of artistic creation. A new generation of exhibition curators displaced art critics and became the nomads 6 C. Bishop, Radical Museology, pp. 18–22. 7 A. Dumbadze, S. Hudson, Introduction. – Contemporary Art: 1989 to the Present, p. 2. 8 A. Dumbadze, S. Hudson, Introduction, p. 2. 9 J. Stallabrass, The Fracturing of Globalization. – Now Is the Time: Art & Theory in the 21st Century. Ed. J. Bouwhuis. Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2009, p. 65.  How to Represent the Present? 253 of the field of contemporary art: constantly on the move, ‘indefatigably trying to act as a ‘catalyst’ for new discussions, while constantly being obliged to go on to the next place’.10 All of these changes, which occurred during a quite short period of time, including the total integration of electronic or digital culture and the hegem- ony of economic liberalism in the field of visual arts11, made it possible to describe the contemporary as a new global period in the development of art. This view is challenged by thinkers who propose using the category of the con- temporary discursively. Bishop notes that it’s unproductive to use this category only for periodisation, because the contemporary as a period does not reveal the global diversity and operates from the Western point of view.12 Following the linguistic definitions of the word ‘contemporary’ as ‘occurring at the same time’ or ‘being with time’, the art historians and philosophers Peter Osborne, Terry Smith and Boris Groys suggest that contemporaneity is a discourse formed from many differ- ent temporalities. They all exist in the present moment, but are asynchronous, dis- junctive and overlapping. Thus, the contemporary is not a homogeneous entity, but is formed from a diversity of perspectives and evaluations of the present moment. According to Smith, ‘Contemporaneity consists precisely in the acceleration, ubiq- uity, and constancy of radical disjunctures of perception, of mismatching ways of seeing and valuing the same world, in the actual coincidence of asynchronous tem- poralities … all thrown together in ways that highlight the fast-growing inequalities within and between them.’13 Osborne notes that the concept of contemporaneity as a unified present is also problematic because there is no shared subject position that allows us to experience the unity of present time. Therefore, contemporaneity is a productive act of imagination, a geopolitical fiction that produces a projection of the present time and space.14 Thus the discursive view on the contemporary high- lights the uneven, heterogeneous structure of the present time. Contemporaneity is a configuration that embraces both past and present and is constructed not from one totalising, but from multiple perspectives that can be suggested by contempo- rary art producers and curators. As a historical category, the contemporary emphasises the spatial turn that hap- pened after 1989: previously separated geopolitical spaces were united in one global perspective of the present. They have not become an integral unity, but interact with each other, and the main platforms for their encounters are biennials and other global exhibitions. Those who theorise on the contemporary as a new histor- ical period are primarily interested in distinct features of global contemporary art production and its perception. They investigate new topics, means of expression and forms of communication that characterise contemporary art, and study its dis- tinct features in relation to previous historical periods. The discursive view of the contemporary highlights time as a category that allows for productive thinking about the present and helps to reveal how different 10 J. Rajchman, The Contemporary: A New Idea? – Aesthetics and Contemporary Art, p. 136. 11 A. Alberro, Periodizing Contemporary Art, p. 67. 12 C. Bishop, Radical Museology, p. 18. 13 T. Smith, Introduction. – Antinomies of Art and Culture, pp. 8–9. 14 P. Osborne, Anywhere or Not at All, pp. 22–25.  JULIJA FOMINA 254 times interact within the present moment and how this can be analysed. The pro- ponents of the discursive view of the contemporary explore the idea of the asyn- chronous present expressed in different artistic practices and are interested in the subjective views, cuts and collisions it might suggest, and in the ways the present moment is ‘inhabited’ by other historical periods and how this is manifested. In other words, in a historical sense the category of contemporaneity involves speak- ing and writing about art, but discursively: through and together with art. The outlined theoretical assumptions of the contemporary, however, are not straightforwardly put into practice by exhibition curators. While in the recent past there were substantial research and exhibition projects that aimed to define the contemporary condition and develop ways to conceptualise it,15 in the last decade of the twentieth century the idea of the contemporary, especially in the former coun- tries of Eastern Europe, was synchronously developed in artistic discourse, art crit- icism, curatorial practice and policies of the new art institutions. In Lithuania during the 1990s the historical approach to the contemporary coex- isted with attempts to discursively produce its meanings and connotations. The two main institutions involved in the production and dissemination of contemporary art practices and discourses during that time were the above-mentioned CAC and SCCA. They promoted and developed contemporary art by organising exhibitions, commissioning new artworks, giving grants to individual artistic projects and pre- senting contemporary Lithuanian artists in prestigious international shows (the Venice and Sao Paolo biennials, etc.). Commenting on the ways Lithuanian curators presented the new, contem- porary art practices in the 1990s, the art critic Lolita Jablonskienė has identified two main types of shows: thematic exhibition, when the theme ‘is configured not indifferently, but emphasises certain views, positions and evaluations the curator and artists express’16 and linguistic exhibition, with its main aim being to ‘present a new language of contemporary art: new emerging kinds of art, currents, means of expression, ways and, of course, ideas. In other words, the topic of exhibitions of this kind is the new language of art’.17 The main challenge to the curators of these shows was to identify when the contemporary started, how it was related to previ- ous époques and how it could be represented via artworks and the medium of the exhibition. The SCCA annual exhibitions illustrated both tendencies outlined by Jablonskienė: they emphasised features of the new, contemporary artistic lan- guage and presented thematic cuts of contemporary art. As in many other coun- tries of Eastern Europe, the SCCA annual shows both consolidated and divided local art communities by bringing forth the different sets of values of their members 15 For instance, The Global Contemporary. Art Worlds After 1989 (exhibition at ZKM, Museum of Contemporary Art, Karsruhe, 17 September 2011 – 5 February 2012). This exhibition arose from the research project Global Art and the Museum (GAM) initiated by ZKM. The other prominent research, education, publishing and exhibition project on the contemporary condition was Former West (2008–2016), organised and coordinated by BAK – basis voor actuele kunst. 16 L. Jablonskienė, Ką reiškia versus? [What does versus mean?]. – Šiaurės Atėnai 31 May 1997, p. 6. 17 L. Jablonskienė, Ką reiškia versus?, p. 6.  How to Represent the Present? 255 and their diverse views on the category of contemporaneity. The analysis of these shows on the subject of the construction of the notion of contemporaneity partially explains the critical or negative reactions towards them. The contemporary style The organisation of the annual exhibitions was one of the activities of the SCCA, established in Lithuania in 1993.18 These centres were created in the countries of Eastern and Central Europe by the Hungarian-American business magnate and philanthropist George Soros as a part of the Open Society Fund programmes that he established.19 These exhibitions, as stipulated in the official regulations common to the SCCA in all countries, had to be devoted to a medium (determined by the local SCCA board members) that ‘is rarely explored within the country, and which requires theoretical and practical exploration’.20 This agenda demonstrates the efforts of the international foundation to develop new art practices in the post-So- viet countries and stimulate integration of the art of these countries into the global discourse. It is also based on the assumption of Soros and his associates that during the Soviet times the non-conformist artists in Eastern Europe suffered from polit- ical repression and at the end of the twentieth century they suddenly found them- selves in new circumstances where they needed ‘intensive rehabilitation therapy’.21 So the annual SCCA exhibition was a way to provide this ‘rehabilitation’ by helping to establish once ‘suppressed’ artists and integrate their oeuvre into the current art discourse. In many publications reviewing activities of the SCCA in Eastern Europe, one could find information that Soros himself had grown up surrounded by traditional culture, and for him contemporary art was a rather distant and incomprehensible phenomenon. So his stimulus to support contemporary art was not based on his personal tastes in art but was rooted in his beliefs in the democratic development of culture.22 As the former director of the SCCA Estonia Sirje Helme observed, Soros’s ‘money supported a number of extremely radical and ‘disgusting’ art projects that 18 SCCA also provided grants for the artists and their projects, supported creation of the database of Lithuanian artists, was editing and publishing art publications. The report on activities and projects by SCCA Lithuania in 1993–1996 could be found here: R. Jurėnaitė, Dailę remianti fundacija – Soroso šiuolaikinio meno centras [Foundation to support visual arts – Soros Centre for Contemporary Art]. – Lietuvos dailės kaita 1990–1996: institucinis aspektas [Changes in Lithuanian art 1990–1996: institutional aspect]. Vilnius: Tarptautinės dailės kritikų asociacijos AICA Lietuvos sekcija, 1997, pp. 26–36. 19 Soros Centres for Contemporary Art were established in the beginning of the last decade of the twentieth century in Budapest, Bratislava, Moscow, Prague, Tallinn, Warsaw, Bucharest, Riga, Kiev, Saint Petersburg, Belgrade, Chisinau, Sarajevo, Odessa and Almaty. 20 Soros Foundations / Soros Centers for Contemporary Arts Network: Procedures Manual (1993). – Archive of the Art Information Centre of the National Art Gallery of Lithuania. 21 J. Borgs, The Soros Era. – Deviņdesmitie. Laikmetīgā māksla Latvijā / Nineties. Contemporary Art in Latvia. Ed. I. Astahovska. Riga: Laikmetīgās mākslas centrs, 2010, p. 46. 22 During the opening of the annual exhibition For Beauty in 1995 at the CAC George Soros addressed the audience in a non-existent language. After the speech he explained that he had invented this language in childhood and it seemed appropriate to use it during the opening of the exhibition as he had no particular important information to say. Later he gave floor to the organisers of the show who, according to Soros, had something much more important to say. From the video documentation of the exhibition For Beauty (1995). – Archive of the Art Information Centre of the National Art Gallery of Lithuania.  JULIJA FOMINA 256 the financier probably would not have liked at all’.23 Therefore, the objective of annual exhibitions was ideological: to support innovations in art and artists who, for political reasons, could not previously be a part of the official art discourse meant to propagate principles of Western democracy in the countries that suffered under communism.24 According to Maria Hlavajova, the former director of the SCCA in Slovakia, the SCCA and other Western institutions aimed to enact the process of ‘normalisation’ by neutralising the differences between East and West, but the price they had to pay for this was ‘adaptation to yet another ideological framework’ and ‘dealing with conflicting interpretations of what becoming ‘normal’ could poten- tially mean’.25 In this light, the SCCA annual exhibitions of contemporary art can also be seen as vehicles for the transition to the new ‘normality’, i.e. to the post-So- viet condition. The first SCCA Lithuania annual exhibition, curated by the institution’s direc- tor, the art critic Raminta Jurėnaitė, demonstrated the execution of the ideological SCCA financing policies and, in her view, a smooth transition of Lithuanian artists to a new, global contemporary art agenda. It was called Between Sculpture and Object – in Lithuanian and was shown at the CAC in 1993. As the title of the exhibition sug- gests, it sought to demonstrate the gradual evolution of Lithuanian sculpture into objects: a more conceptual form of art that, nevertheless, had its roots in modernist tradition. The curator decided not to illustrate her ideas with artworks, but rather to crystallise the topic of the exhibition ‘from the existing or only just coming into existence material’26 with the aim ‘of revealing to the artists themselves and oth- ers what there used to be and what at present exists in Lithuania’.27 The exhibition featured more than 80 works by 22 sculptors and painters of different generations; 23 S. Helme, The Soros Center for Contemporary Arts, Estonia in the Extreme Decimal. – Nosy Nineties: Problems, Themes and Meanings in Estonian Art on 1990s. Eds. S. Helme, J. Saar. Tallinn: Center for Contemporary Arts, Estonia, 2001, p. 35. 24 Ideological aims of Soros foundations are also proved by the fact that while establishing the SCCA offices in the former Soviet countries, it was recommended to equip them in the contemporary, that is Western, manner, use ‘Western’ stationery and office equipment. As noted by Jablonskienė, in the beginning of the 1990s it was expected ‘that the activities undertaken in the space are ... sterile, orderly and proper as its interior’. See L. Jablonskienė, Key Words: Design, Participation, Deejaying. – Emisija 2004 – ŠMC. Ed. L. Dovydaitytė. Vilnius: Contemporary Art Centre, 2005, p. 46. Former SCCA Latvia director Jānis Borgs recollects that in 1993, the opening of the SCCA in Riga was followed by a grand banquet. Later on Suzanne Meszoly, the executive director of SCCA network noted, that in other countries the same openings were followed by coctail receptions organised according to ‘democratic’ standards (‘chips and Coke’). While equipping SCCA office in Riga the instructions were also received to follow the ‘democratic’ style: so that all the employees work in the same space. See J. Borgs, The Soros Era, pp. 47–48. 25 M. Hlavajova, Towards the Normal: Negotiating the ‘Former East’. – The Manifesta Decade: Debates on Contemporary Art Exhibitions and Biennials in Post-Wall Europe. Eds. B. Vanderlinden, E. Filipovic. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005, p. 153. Hlavajova refers to the term ‘dialectics of normality’, coined by curator Bojana Pejić. Pejić used it to express the difference between normality and normalisation in Eastern Europe after 1989, as well as conflicts and contradictions during these processes that she witnessed while curating the exhibition (with David Elliott) After the Wall: Art and Culture in Post-Communist Europe in Moderna Museet in Stockholm. See B. Pejić, The Dialectics of Normality. – After the Wall: Art and Culture in Post-Communist Europe. Eds. B. Pejić, D. Elliot. Stockholm: Moderna Museet, 1999, pp. 16–28. 26 Between Sculpture and Object – in Lithuanian. Ed. R. Jurėnaitė. Vilnius: SCCA Lithuania, 1993, p. 5. 27 Between Sculpture and Object – in Lithuanian, p. 5.  How to Represent the Present? 257 some of the works were created specifically for the exhibition.28 According to the curator, the artworks of the selected artists represented different interpretations of the myth of the native country, because the Soviet occupation had determined the specific situation of Lithuanian art. In her words, art here is ‘a bridge of a national heritage between past and future’.29 In the exhibition space, both sculptures and objects – terms that lacked defi- nitions in the curatorial concept – were exhibited alongside each other, as if their authors were continuing each other’s lines of thought (fig. 1). By emphasising the historical continuity of sculpture, Jurėnaitė did not clearly define the specificity of the contemporary art language. Thus the overall exhibition narrative presented the category of ‘the contemporary’ as a specific artistic style of the post-Soviet period. This style was not marked by distinct innovations and was not autonomous in the sense of ideas and forms. Such a non-critical reading of the contemporary sug- gested that the new period of art had already started in Lithuania, but contempo- rary artists were still concerned with formal expression rather than a sociopolitical or any other agenda. A similar reading of contemporaneity was presented in the second annual SCCA exhibition, Bread and Salt, also curated by Jurėnaitė, in 1994. She continued to search for the links between the Soviet and contemporary means of artistic cre- ation, this time focusing not on certain branches of art, but on a particular theme: the reflection of social issues in works of art. According to Jurėnaitė, in the difficult transitional period, ‘in Lithuanian art a mythologised image of the world was still dominant, though some sharp slivers of life were making an attempt to disturb it’.30 While compiling the collection of artworks, she had quite a contradictory task: to unveil the ‘reality’ behind them while showing works that speak about ‘life as it is … lived as the present, not as a myth’.31 She also claimed that the majority of the works in Bread and Salt represented ‘the artist’s critical relationship with society, and vig- ilance regarding even small signs of historical and everyday changes’.32 Jurėnaitė selected works by the well-known Lithuanian painters and photographers of the Soviet times and also invited some representatives of the younger generation of artists to create new works that corresponded to the concept of the show.33 The catalogue text and the selected works make it clear that the curator inter- preted the social dimension in a straightforward manner: as the works’ ties with 28 Participating artists: Gediminas Akstinas, Aleksas Andriuškevičius, Robertas Antinis, Darius Bastys, Jonas Gasiūnas, Donatas Jankauskas, Gediminas Karalius, Džiugas Katinas, Gintautas Kažemėkas, Saulius Kuizinas, Algis Lankelis, Linas Liandzbergis, česlovas Lukenskas, Deimantas Narkevičius, Mindaugas Navakas, Audrius Novickas, Artūras Raila, Vytautas Šerys, Mindaugas Šnipas, Vytautas Umbrasas, Gediminas Urbonas, Ričardas Vaitiekūnas. 29 Between Sculpture and Object – in Lithuanian, p. 6. 30 Bread and Salt. Ed. R. Jurėnaitė. Vilnius: SCCA, 1994, p. 5. 31 Quote from the interview with the exhibition curator Raminta Jurėnaitė. Video documentation of the exhibition Bread and Salt (1994, director V. Snarskis). – Archive of the Art Information Centre of the National Gallery of Lithuania. 32 Bread and Salt, p. 5. 33 Participating artits: Jurga Barilaitė, Darius Bastys, Alfonsas Budvytis, Kostas Dereškevičius, Eglė Gineitytė, Darius Girčys, Vidmantas Ilčiukas, Vytenis Jankūnas, Giedrius Kumetaitis, Algimantas Jonas Kuras, Dainius Liškevičius, Aleksandras Macijauskas, Snieguolė Michelkevičiūtė, Deimantas Narkevičius, Mindaugas Navakas, Audronė Petrašiūnaitė, Audrius Puipa, Mindaugas Ratavičius, Gintaras Šeputis, Ignas Šimelis, Simonas Tarvydas, Gintautas Trimakas, Kazys Venclovas.  JULIJA FOMINA 258 1. Between Sculpture and Object – in Lithuanian (1993). Exhibition view. Photo from the archive of the Contemporary Art Centre. 2. Gintaras Makarevičius. The Curtain (1995). Installation. Photo from the exhibition catalogue Kasdienybės kalba / Mundane Language. Ed. A. Lankelis. Vilnius: Soros Center for Contemporary Arts, 1996.  How to Represent the Present? 259 3. Gediminas Urbonas. Coming or Going? (1995). Installation. Photo from the catalogue of the exhibition Mundane Language.  JULIJA FOMINA 260 4. Lithuanian Art 1989–1999: The Ten Years (1999). Exhibition view. Photo from the archive of the Contemporary Art Centre.  How to Represent the Present? 261 daily matters, universal human values, hidden desires and fears. This take on socially engaged art did not correspond to the common art historical definition of this term: critical art practices that tackle current political or societal issues, often provocative and seeking to initiate real societal changes. Jurėnaitė acknowledged this herself by using a metaphor in the title of the show. Unlike in Sculpture and Object – in Lithuanian she was not concerned with finding examples of the estab- lished and internationally acknowledged forms of art in the local context. Bread and Salt was an attempt to prove that in Soviet times artists not only used the Aesopian language and avoided critical issues in the name of formal investigations. Their works also addressed the critical issues of that period and these tendencies became more visible in the post-Soviet society. It is interesting to note that the curator of the annual SCCA Latvia exhibition Valsts (The State) of the same year, Jurėnaitė’s contemporary Ivars Runkovskis, also suggested a quite similar – non-conflictual and pointedly apolitical – interpretation of the social dimension of art. He explained that the name of the exhibition did not refer to the social realm, but was rather an invitation to artists to ‘take over the state’: to create site-specific works outside exhibition halls, and explore all possible means of communication, creation and state structures (police, post offices, librar- ies, hospitals, etc.).34 Despite the seemingly apolitical exhibition character, Latvian artists created some provocative works that reflected the social reality and were dis- cussed in a lively manner among the citizens of Riga (maybe due to the fact that the exhibition took place not only in contemporary art spaces, but also in public spaces and in a traditional museum). In Lithuania, Bread and Salt was received by artists and the public in quite a negative way. The curator’s tendency to make poetic gener- alisations and the all-encompassing reading of the social dimension of art that art- ists responded to in quite individual manners35 were among the reasons why Bread and Salt did not become a solid critical presentation of socially engaged practices in Lithuanian art. This was noted by many reviewers of the exhibition, who claimed that the social critique that Jurėnaitė had tried to present in the show was not rele- vant to the present, contemporary times, but rather was directed towards universal human experiences in any kind of reality.36 To summarise, both SCCA annual exhibitions curated by Jurėnaitė presented non-critical approaches to the contemporary and framed it as a new historical period that had replaced the previous, Soviet epoch. Emphasising similarities in artistic strategies in the works of Lithuanian artists of the younger and older 34 Quote from S. Krese, Exhibition Rhetoric or What Shapes the Art Language of the 1990s. – Deviņdesmitie. Laikmetīgā māksla Latvijā / Nineties. Contemporary Art in Latvia, p. 66. 35 The painter who received the young artist’s award in the exhibition, Jurga Barilaitė, was asked by the journalist how her works related to the concept of the exhibition. She answered: ‘I doubt that my works are breaking any social or national stereotypes. I work with the themes of love or death – these are not new, many artists speak about them. I think that me and Dainius [Liškevičius, the other young artist presented in the show – J. F.] were invited to ... take part in the show because our works are closely related to the present. [---] ‘Bread and Salt’ means that we speak about more painful things than the trivial everyday. And one can detect a social aspect anywhere.’ – Duona ir druska: įdomiausio jaunojo dailininko titulas [Bread and Salt: the award for the most interesting young artist]. – Lietuvos rytas 2 December 1994, p. 33. 36 S. Skurvidaitė, Donelaičio apologetika Šiuolaikinio meno centre [Donelaitis’ apologetics in the Contemporary Art Centre]. – Lietuvos rytas 18 November 1994, p. 37.  JULIJA FOMINA 262 generations, the curator suggested that the transition to the new period was neither sudden nor radical. On the contrary, she envisioned the new period as pointedly non-confrontational and interpreted the works of contemporary artists as resum- ing the creative strategies suppressed in the Soviet times. Hence, contemporary art, as the creative oeuvre of the representatives of all generations, should play an important role in the processes of the development of the national culture and its integration into the global discourse. Discursive contemporaneity: between past and present An attempt to discursively present the notion of contemporaneity was made in 1995 in the annual SCCA exhibition Mundane Language, curated by the artist Algis Lankelis.37 It was one of the first group exhibitions of contemporary art in the pub- lic spaces of Vilnius that presented site-specific works. The curator claimed that the main objectives of this show were to physically and conceptually connect art with the social environment and show the potential of contemporary art.38 Artworks by 14 artists were created specifically for spots in the city that were chosen by the art- ists themselves and became signs or comments on the historical change from the Soviet to the post-Soviet to the contemporary. The majority of artists (most of them representatives of the younger generation) critically commented on and questioned the impact of Soviet ideology on individuals and public spaces of the city, creating installations and other artworks around abandoned buildings. For instance, the installation by Gintaras Makarevičius, The Curtain (fig. 2), was a curtain put up on the ruins of the Russian Drama Theatre in Vilnius. Others focused on the changed functions of the buildings and spaces or wittily commented on the unclear future or evaluations of the past. One of the highlights of this show was the installation Coming or Going? (fig. 3) by the sculptor Gediminas Urbonas: mirror cubes on the heads of Soviet sculptures erected in the early 1960s on the Green Bridge in the cen- tre of Vilnius. The work commented on the unclear references of the post-Soviet era that were solidly based on the past and yet looked towards the uncertain future. As noted by the art critic Laima Kreivytė, Mundane Language did not in fact comment on mundane things, but rather on quite heavy historical issues and exis- tential topics.39 Nevertheless, this show attempted to present different temporali- ties that inhabited the public spaces of the city of Vilnius, as well as searching for ways to deal with the past and the present through artistic practices. The artworks became parts of the public space, some of them, such as the above-mentioned Urbonas installation, also became parts of the public discourse on the Soviet her- itage. Overall, this exhibition attempted to construct a slightly more critical and discursive view of ‘the contemporary’. Unlike Jurėnaitė’s shows, Mundane Language 37 See Kasdienybės kalba / Mundane Language. [Catalogue.] Ed. A. Lankelis. Vilnius: Soros Center for Contemporary Arts, 1996. 38 Apie nesamą grožį kasdienybės kalba [On the non-existent beauty in mundande language]. – Kultūros barai 1995, no. 12, p. 27. 39 L. Kreivytė, Menas ant ratų [Art on the wheels]. – Literatūra ir menas 4 November 1995, p. 9.  How to Represent the Present? 263 did not highlight the continuation of the modernist way of thinking or national traditions in the works of contemporary artists, but declared an abandonment and rethinking of this tradition. It considered ‘the contemporary’ as a discourse created by artists reflecting on current issues, and their artistic and sociopolitical agenda. Even though some of the works in Mundane Language were more illustrative than critical, the exhibition was one of the first attempts to show possible ways contem- porary artists could take part in a public discourse on relevant societal issues. The features of the contemporary period One of the prominent examples of exhibitions of Lithuanian contemporary art that employed the contemporary as a periodising concept and outlined mostly new forms of art was Lithuanian Art 1989–1999: The Ten Years, organised by the CAC cura- tors40 in 1999. They selected works that were ‘the most characteristic, memorable and even emblematic examples of Lithuanian art’41, and presented the history of the last decade of the twentieth century ‘as a process of dynamic change’42. As noted by one of the curators, the CAC’s director Kęstutis Kuizinas, 1989 marked a ‘...beginning of alternative artistic thinking: it was within the framework of Gorbachev’s policy of ‘glasnost’ and the ‘Rebirth’ … that daring new cultural ideas began to materialise. From that point onwards time began to move at a completely different speed in Lithuania’s art life. To put it expressively, it ceased to move at its usual pace and began to run.’43 Thus, the exhibition aimed to identify and present the essential changes in Lithuanian art brought about by the acceleration of time after 1989. Consistent with the attitude that contemporaneity as a new historical period in the development of art began after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, one could say that Lithuanian Art 1989–1999 presented an overview of the first stage of global contemporary art’s formation in Lithuania. The exhibition featured works by 75 Lithuanian artists of different generations. According to the curators, these works had actively contributed to shaping the dis- course of Lithuanian contemporary art and aroused critics’ interest. Many of them had previously been shown in the CAC’s exhibitions or were commissioned by this institution. So they also reflected the institution’s role in shaping the language of contemporary art. One part of the exhibition displayed traditional genres: paint- ing, sculpture and graphic art. The other part (fig. 4) presented key examples of non-traditional and new art: video, installations, new painting and objects. A part of the exposition was dedicated to an archive which documented works that could not be recreated due to their scale or performative nature. The show was accompa- nied by a comprehensive catalogue containing texts on the crucial changes in the 40 Kęstutis Kuizinas, Evaldas Stankevičius, Deimantas Narkevičius, Raimundas Malašauskas, Jonas Valatkevičius. 41 K. Kuizinas, Lithuanian Art 1989–1999. Questions and Answers. – Lietuvos dailė 1989–1999: dešimt metų / Lithuanian Art 1989–1999: The Ten Years. Ed. K. Kuizinas. Vilnius: Contemporary Art Centre, 1999, p. 11. 42 K. Kuizinas, Lithuanian Art 1989–1999, p. 11. 43 K. Kuizinas, Lithuanian Art 1989–1999, p. 9.  JULIJA FOMINA 264 development of Lithuanian art throughout the 1990s. Although the declared selec- tion criteria of the artworks were quite subjective, the show drew a fairly clear dis- tinction between ‘old’ (modernist) and contemporary art. The latter employed new artistic means and creative methods and was conceptual: based on clear ideas or even ‘plans’ that artists had prior to executing the pieces. It also included globally relevant issues and emerged out of close interaction between artists, curators and institutions. In this way, Lithuanian Art 1989–1999: The Ten Years was one of the first attempts to outline the contemporary as a historical period that faced substantial changes in the means of artistic expression. The new, contemporary art language was financially and otherwise supported by new institutions of contemporary art and was presented as an important part of the global art agenda. *** In the analysed cases of exhibitions of Lithuanian contemporary art in the 1990s, contemporaneity was presented mostly as a new historical period that replaced the Soviet. However, the curatorial framing of these exhibitions reveals the differ- ences in approaches to the historical past and its continuation in the global present. Between Sculpture and Object (1993) and Lithuanian art 1989–1999 (1999) focused on the new language of contemporary art or new means of artistic creation, while Bread and Salt (1994) presented a thematic cross-section of the contemporary period. The curator Raminta Jurėnaitė developed the image of contemporaneity as a new style that emerged in post-Soviet Lithuania in a non-confrontational way. In her fram- ing, ‘the contemporary’ was tied to the legacy of local modernist art and in this way she sought to ensure non-contentious Lithuanian art’s passage into the discourse of globalisation. Her shows also emphasised the distinctive character of Lithuanian contemporary art in the Eastern European context, which she associated with met- aphorical thinking and preservation of ties with local art traditions. In contrast, the curator Algis Lankelis tried to institute contemporaneity as a discourse between the past and present. In Mundane Language, artists approached the present through the public spaces of the capital city of Vilnius, making problematic, forgotten or ordinary spots of the city visible and inhabiting them with new meanings. The curators of the survey Lithuanian Art 1989–1999: The Ten Years framed the contem- porary as a new period in the development of Lithuanian art that was distinguished by the use of new means of artistic production and was created with financial and other institutional support. These different attempts to present and construct the meanings of ‘the contemporary’ have shaped the consciousness of the Lithuanian artists, critics and public in connection with the issues of contemporary art that are still relevant today.