Lauryna Narkeviciute
Lauryna Narkeviciute creates intricate new media artworks that carefully weave physical and virtual dimensions together. Narkeviciute’s work bears a distinct three-dimensionality in its visual traits and the external inspirations she folds into each piece. She adds this dimensionality through frequent collaborations with musicians, brands, and other artists. Each of her compositions establishes her bold and crisp style by combining delicate imagery with the inherently indestructible character of digital media.
Lauryna Narkeviciute.
For more information on Narkeviciute’s work, visit her website or her Instagram.
Narkeviciute began her practice at the Vilnius Academy of Arts, where she studied Photography and Media Arts. Her initial pull toward photography grew into her current practice in visual design, three-dimensional art, and installation art.
Now, Narkeviciute’s digital proficiency opens up limitless possibilities for expressing the fruits of her imagination. A large part of her production includes frequently adapting to ever-evolving technology. A significant theme within Narkeviciute’s oeuvre is the relationship between humans and technology. For her, adapting means leaning into the challenges and changes of the digital age. As a result, her work reflects how artistic tools and styles have evolved due to computerisation.
One such example is her site-specific installation piece, It feels as though I’m heading home (2021). This work was commissioned by Lithuania’s Uzventis Museum and is dedicated to the memory of the famous Lithuanian writer and social activist Šatrijos Ragana. To create the piece, Narkeviciute collaborated with a team of musicians, dramatists, IT developers, producers, and programmers. Together, they erected the mesmerising audiovisual installation, available to watch here, in a beekeeper’s home where Ragana once taught children.
The swirling spots unfurl the content of the 391 letters written by Ragana - each of them representing one of her thoughts carried into the digital age. The dots visually represent each full stop found at the end of every sentence within the 391 letters. They flutter, illuminate, and disappear, replicating bees forming a pattern and embodying the ephemeral nature of thoughts and ideas. Narkeviciute makes data into art, using minimalist graphics to hypnotise the viewer and memorialise Ragana’s life.
Still images and installation shots from It feels as though I’m heading home, 2021.
Narkeviciute’s collaborations extend past museums into many different spheres, encompassing calendar prints, graphics to accompany live music performances, and album covers. She finds powerful creative inspiration in music and so naturally links it with her artistic practice. Crossings (2019) is one such example.
This musical commission was created for artist Abraham Brody's (EYIBRA) live performance at the LvivMozArt festival in Ukraine. A graphite-coloured man stares out of the frame, the left side of his body sleek like a classical sculpture. However, a web of nerves and holes threatens to eradicate this perfection on the right. Metallic rings encircle the man’s head, neck, shoulders, and chest as if he sheds his skin and it slowly melts away.
When creating this installation, Narkeviciute was inspired by EYIBRA’s activism toward socio-political change, as the artist’s work explores themes of gender, discrimination, and homophobia. Crossings probes these themes by articulating the desire to free oneself of social constraints and stereotypes, just like the figure discards his confines.
Left: Crossings, 2019. Digital media. Right: EYIBRA’s performance at the LvivMozArt Festival, Lviv, Ukraine.
In addition to her collaborations, Narkeviciute pursues personal examinations of her emotions and experiences. Her Incognito series (2020-2021) began during the COVID-19 pandemic. Narkeviciute was affected by the pressure of the pandemic atmosphere, and she began noticing the depersonalisation that occurred as our faces were covered to protect others. The profound sense of loss, of both interpersonal interaction and our pre-pandemic selves, is channelled into Incognito. Its three parts all present forms that recede from our view and become unidentifiable: a face with no features, a gust of breath or a question unanswered due to the loneliness of isolation. The pleats of a landscape we cannot visit or the bed sheets we do not leave. In the process of creating this work, Narkeviciute drew from the beliefs of philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. She concentrated on his conclusion that looking someone in the face makes us responsible for them, raising the questions of responsibility in a faceless society.
Incognito, 2020-2021. Digital media.
As for the future, Narkeviciute is currently working toward her Master’s in Fine Art Digital at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. Within her studies, she focuses on how digital production and consumption influence human habits, cognition, and adaptation abilities. In addition, her art will continue to draw attention to the importance of conscious everyday behaviour in the digital space and the ways in which we can cultivate a healthy relationship with technology.
Gabriella Hetu
Emerging Artists Co-Editor, MADE IN BED