KRISTINA ČYŽIŪTĖ
Lithuania
THE 17th OF MARCH. 2010. Flax, polyamide, classic gobelin viewing. 185 cm x 255 cm
The 17th of March is the exact date when I met my former yokefellow. So the story of my artwork is not a repetitive event – it was a fact, as well as the one that the visual expression of the tapestry is a single fragment of life which I chose randomly. It was important to me that the composition of my work would be daily and material so that it would be eager to transform my intimate spaces into the space of public experience where all our lives, our things, acts and feelings are tangled up with the correlating threads. When you take a pen and draw a dot on the table, it will not only be visible, but, moreover, will transform the table. Everyday we speck our lives with so many dots that disappear in commonness though irreversibly modifies it. In season and out of season we balance amongst coincidence and improbability, necessity and commitment. So we each carry a responsibility of choosing the things we want to remember and the things we choose to see. So I put my choices and options into the tapestry intending to show how the story of one person can change the narrative of the family or the whole society.
Many dots that formed and transformed my life found their way into “The 17th of March”. These dots are my children who bond my life to different men and diverse destinies. Those dots are the things which all came into my kitchen under bizarre circumstances – the cupboard of my first husband in which I placed the cups given as a present of my unfamiliar cousin from Belorussia, the water-glass that travelled its way form Chicago, a bunch of teapots pre-owned by so many different people, the coaster of the 17th of March. When I watch and count the items and faces in the sight, everything looks so separate but when I include myself into this picture, everything becomes united. All the things assembled into the daily composition tell MY story.
Starting from the symbol of the date I made every object visible and so transformable for the viewer. We live in a multilingual world where everyone has his own choices for his own narrative which is composed out of many different personal and universal stories. So, in order to organize a narrative one doesn’t’ have to have knowledge equal to our experience or be the one he represents. So the mind that follows is that the visual representation of the story doesn’t have to fulfil or correspond to reality. So my intention was not to create but to recreate the narrative of my life. I weaved the stories of the past which reflected itself in present, the reality formed itself in turn. The kids grew, the man left, the symbol of anniversary found its place in the trashcan, the past became an image. The change that is brought by time makes our stories more visual than intentional. Every story is connectible to the personal narrative of another person or viewer. So with this peace of art I suggest the viewer to unlock the stories which are already unfolded, not for the publicity of my being but for the comfort of others.
