VITA GELŪNIENĖ

1969

Lithuania

THE HUNT OF THE UNICORN. 2010-2011. Tapestry, classic gobelin weaving

This work, which was developed over a period of three years, is influenced by those tapestries produced during the high period of textile (XV-XVI c.). Their unifying feature is a pattern of flowers called mille-fleurs and a Unicorn, an image that went into decline during the Renaissance. I borrowed the title of my work from a set of tapestries – „The Hunt of the Unicorn“(1495–1505), Southern Netherlands(?). The set of seven tapestries depicts a dramatic capture of the Unicorn. The woven story reveals passion, pain, disaster, rapaciousness and docility; it shows blood, armaments and heroes fighting with their enemy with a sole purpose to conquer, to appropriate and to claim the victory over the Unicorn (happiness). A distinguishing feature of this state of exception, the heroism of war and feast, is a counterpoint to what is ordinary.

In contrast, another set of six tapestries „Lady with the Unicorn“ (circa 1500, Flanders) does not reveal any conflict or drama. A young noble Lady (each tapestry depicts different characters) is represented in a serene way. She experiences the world through all her physical senses – hearing, sight, taste, smell and touch. The Unicorn, which according to the legend can only be allured by a virgin, is staying humbly alongside. From the last piece „À Mon Seul Désir“ („My One Desire“), we conceive that the true happiness is not to possess the Unicorn but to experience it in your heart. The image shows the Lady taking off her pearl necklace – a symbol of a wealthy life – thus taming the desires of the body. This set of tapestries presents the opposite of the state of exception represented by war and the extreme – the ordinary.

Heroic, devastating events in the person’s life (at least my own life) can be counted on the fingers of a hand. And what is the rest? The rest is the un-heroic struggle with daily life.

Herein, I explore the meaning of the lived life and recipes to capture the Unicorn through non-heroic and insignificant everyday being, which, nonetheless, has cracks and possibilities. I speak about the heroism of the mundane (which is probably a paradox in itself), and also about the tools which can be meaningful in the “hunting” process (spears, dogs, pearls, threads, weaving). The image depicts two dormant people, possessed by fate and the mundane. They are surrounded with an environment formed by a historical and cultural heritage which has frictions and cracks of space and time. That is a suggestion for a chance and a possibility to interrupt the threads of fatality and to be the true hunters of their own Unicorn.