Celebrate for Change

We invite you to the main photography exhibition analysing the theme of celebration. We participate in state, ideological or religious, mass or personal celebrations, but do we often think about their significance?

The celebration can become resistance to restrictive political systems, social structures and cultural norms. During celebrations, we also create new principles of public life, we can get rid of the usual norms of behaviour, social roles.

And how is photography involved in these social processes? It immortalizes the festivities but also becomes a part of them. The ritual of photography establishes the relations between the participants of the celebration, and the photograph seems to guarantee their longevity. Photography often determines the form of the celebration itself, the appearance and behaviour of its participants, and the celebration is turned into a “photogenic” performance.

In the exhibition, you will see the works of Lithuanian photographers and contemporary artists of various generations from MO and other collections. Artistic photography will be complemented by documentary material on subcultures: from hippies to current youth movements. It is the subcultures that are characterized by the authentic festive culture and its alternative forms.

Furthermore, we will invite you to learn more about celebrations in various ways: through documentary video and audio material, a special non-traditional audio guide and, of course, photographs and interdisciplinary works. In this way, visitors of the exhibition will be able to experience various forms of the celebration, and then ask themselves whether this experience has changed their attitude towards themselves and the world.

While visiting the exhibition we must wear protective face masks.

Curators: Tomas Pabedinskas ir Ugnė Paberžytė
Consulting curators: Arvydas Grišinas
Consultant: Egidija Ramanauskaitė
Exhibition Graphic designer: Gytis Skudžinskas
Exhibition Architects: ŠA Atelier

Artworks we use in the advertising campaign of the exhibition:
Visvaldas Morkevičius, Public Secrets. #31, Vilnius, 2014
Vytautas Stanionis, Demonstration in Alytus, 1959
Ugnius Gelguda, Žalgiris (Installation detail), 2006
Romualdas Požerskis, Baltic Way, 1989
Vaclovas Straukas, The Final Bell, 1978