Artospective: Paintings by Monika Furmanaviciute from Lithuania.

From the Brush of Artist - I was born in the forest of Vilnius in 1978. That’s why I am a witch. Grown up with woofs and entered Vilnius academy of fine art. Always new I want to speak by paint, because I was lonely and felt different, passionate and fearful, human and animal at the same.

That is the reason why contrasts captivate me. They arouse me and shake me up. It’s the same with blurred boundaries. They allow me to complicate my existence. Such surfaces turn into intense energetic knots in which the relation between body and thing is crucial – the life hiding in the thing and the thing-like quality of the body. In my work, these two components began to slowly intertwine into a single cyborg “woman-machine”, into a woman whose body is shot through with history, a history that grows into a burden, nourishing itself with her own body, becoming inescapable. This painful conjunction is grounded in silk – seemingly a metaphor of beauty, softness and fragility, but in reality, a strong and durable manufactured material.

By identifying myself with my surrounding environment I always see a new reflection whose life becomes deformed or mystified.

I experiment with my body as my model, and the searched-for “truth” travels from one body to another, from the body to object and back again. But the “truth” is never contained in any one of them. This conception is related to the idea of ever-changing substance which is more precisely expressed with contours than with finished form and texture. The primary persona – the woman’s body – is as if possessed by unreality, constantly re-organizing itself, doubling and moving itself “out” into another “self” where it longs for imminent fulfillment.

I try on identities like clothes, but always feel like I am dressing an other, never finding my own...