★★★★★ / No sex – no water? Review of the exhibition “This is not with us” | Culture

I am not telling this episode for self-promotion – there will be no link to the publication, although it has remained accessible to anyone who knows the basics of the Internet.

I present this fact as my competence to write about the exhibition “We don’t have this at the MO Museum. Intimacy, norms and desires in the art of the Baltic countries” proof. Because this is an exhibition that I cannot enter as an art critic alone. There are subjects whose understanding requires subjectivity, especially those whose voices are not necessarily heard first.

To say we don’t have sex would be like saying we don’t have water.

Sex and intimacy have some universal rules: it can only happen with mutual consent and only with those who can give that consent; no one should be killed or injured in the process. Everything else is free-flowing rivers, dammed and diverted in every way according to the vision of each civilization.

Say that not moved no sex would be the same not moved there is no water. This is either not true or a bit of a disaster – and what could be the purpose of claiming and being proud that we survive without water? On the other hand, where this natural resource is easily available, there is no need to talk much about it either. It is simply a condition of life that can be both a routine and a source of enjoyment.

Lukas Balandis/BNS photo/Presentation of the big exhibition of the three Baltic countries “This is not with us”.

I choose water as a metaphor for a reason. While I was preparing this article in the Warsaw gallery local30 “SPLASH: eco + hydrosexuals unite!” exhibition of creations of eco- and hydrosexuals is taking place. Unfortunately, I couldn’t make it to the exhibition, but I was very happy to see it in such a close context.

When I first heard about the ecosexuality movement, I was fascinated by what a sensitive and radical worldview it is. Indeed, what would happen if we saw the earth as our closest lover? And even in a country like Lithuania, where it is not difficult to find a lake for the night, and the meadows rush to tickle your bare feet. Would we bravely chop down our forest if we sincerely cared about pleasing it with our physical and conscious proximity? The philosophy and creativity of eco- and hydro-sexuals is fluid, experimental, creating a parallel world at the edges of the familiar.

This vague feeling prompts us to turn around the main question of the exhibition – what is this unique thing that we have here?

It’s hard to say that of this sexuality it really is not moved there isn’t, but the truth is that I’m the only one who hasn’t noticed yet. I have no doubt that even as I write these lines, someone’s heart and other creative organs are throbbing with an as yet indecipherable rhythm. This vague feeling prompts us to turn around the main question of the exhibition – what is unique this onewhose not moved is there?

The curators of the exhibition, Adomas Narkevičius, Inga Lāce and Rebeka Põldsam, are paving the way of Baltic sensibility from approximately the beginning of the so-called “warming” period to the present day. More precisely, as it becomes clear from the interview of the curators with the art critic Kotryna Markevičiūte in the publication dedicated to the exhibition, it is more the path of his artistic articulation.

Lukas Balandis/BNS photo/Presentation of the big exhibition of the three Baltic countries “This is not with us”.

In doing so, the curators not only select the works “on the theme”, but also delve into their development, historical circumstances that resonated in different periods. Communities of artists have a kind of privilege in the context of society’s desires. Certainly not because they do not include groups discriminated against in society – rather, because in creative groups of like-minded people they can strengthen and support each other, exchange intense physical and emotional experiences. Even in a totalitarian, purposefully repressed society, artists can keep certain public secrets or private fantasies and ensure their survival.

And this exhibition is not only relevant in Lithuania, which avoids the Istanbul Convention and same-sex marriages. She’s just good.

This in no way means that the art community is immune to intimate violence or cases of discrimination, which are unfortunately full of both history and the present. But there will probably still be more flexible structures of love and exchange than in that part of society where strict family, gender, and lifestyle models are established. As a result, I am delighted by the curators’ clearly articulated choice to be not anthropologists but researchers and participants in art history. This is a slippery line that is not maintained in every relevant exhibition.

And this exhibition is not only relevant in Lithuania, which avoids the Istanbul Convention and same-sex marriages. She’s just good. In the large hall of the MO Museum, the result of a well-executed study stretches out – a complex panorama of the desires of the entire region, which is able to smoothly maneuver between universal trends and chronological or regional peculiarities. The curators successfully uncover even what not moved, as there are still affirmatives, there really isn’t – transsexuality and other ways of gender fluidity, intimacy beyond sexuality, subjective and witty female gaze, BDSM, glamor, rave, obvious cracks in family structures.

The curators spread the spectrum of intimacy widely and articulate its Baltic peculiarities in a high-quality theoretical context, for example, using the dialectic of gaze and observation. It is really gratifying to review the scenes of trolleybuses, post office, and store queues in the context of physicality, which we are used to seeing historically and artistically only as “orders of the regime” and not actual testimonies of reality. The oldest work in the exhibition – Vincent Gech’s painting “Collection Market” (1959) – shines with a careful feminist reading, reminding us that even ideological coercion cannot neutralize the inner reality of thinking.

Lukas Balandis/BNS photo/Presentation of the big exhibition of the three Baltic countries “This is not with us”.

The revealing differences in the artistic expression of the three Baltic countries are also intriguing. Estonian art stands out as significantly more figurative and declarative than most Lithuanian or Latvian works. There seems to be something very urban in Latvian art – there are more buildings and intrigues brewing between them, and time seems to have melted away. Lithuanians, it seems, remain thoughtful and down-to-earth until the regaining of independence, when question marks and possibilities are added to the air.

But even while enjoying the confirmation that we have everythingI miss something quite simple at the exhibition – pleasure. Pleasure is very slippery, and may not happen even under all the necessary conditions. Therefore, I do not rule out the possibility that this remark will not be objective either – maybe this is just how I experience the environment at the moment. The various nuggets of ecstasy, sweetness, and joy really shine through the show, but when you look at the big picture, that pleasure doesn’t seem normal – even in the games of sun-drenched bodies. Reality partially confirms this.

In public space, pleasure is suppressed and associated with greater or lesser luxury, rather than a human right or an organic opportunity to experience the world. Even the structure of the city of Vilnius lacks opportunities to experience true, albeit innocent, pleasure – there is a lack of tree shade, dances and songs, an inexpensive steam bath, aesthetic solutions, evening light.

Lukas Balandis/BNS photo/Presentation of the big exhibition of the three Baltic countries “This is not with us”.

One could argue that the closeness and constant pains of war are at work, but history shows that the tendency to dine by candlelight persists even in the bunkers. Just like the words quoted in the exhibition not movedthis lack of pleasure seems somehow wrong and foreign, just like the traces of trauma in any body. But did we really live in a free-speaking, self-loving society before it? And if so, what prevents you from returning to it – to take back your right to enjoy yourself without vomiting from overwork, vodka or undiagnosed diseases?

I cannot provide answers to these questions – I have already written one version, but since then a lot has changed both in the universe and in me. One of the changes is that such a comprehensive and high-quality exhibition about lust could appear at all, and even in such a popular institution as the MO Museum. And the fact that I miss one phenomenon in it is not even a criticism. It is a void that will surely be filled by other artists, other curators, other viewers and institutions. Filled with lakes, beaches and gentle hands, or the end of summer, every year – more and more hot and temporary. I hope it will be filled by increasing investments in quality exhibitions – not only financial, but also intellectual, emotional, labor investments. That we may experience pleasure in them—seeing ourselves, seeing more bodies, seeing, even, sheer chaos in both space and eras.