Kopa 

2024 10 22–2024 12 08

Kopa’s (Sinaima Kontautė‘s) exhibition "I Don't Know. I Don't Understand. I Have No Idea." continues the theme of transitional states that dominates her work. The artist presents the exhibition as a seamless installation in the space of Gallery T.2, constructed on the principle of a mind map. The interdisciplinary objects are presented as fragments of a larger whole, complementing each other and creating a reflection of a period of search, doubt and suspension. Kopa's exhibition pays particular attention to immersing the viewer in the experience of the works. The exhibition itself becomes a single work, which we enter from the industrial zone of Paneriai on the outskirts of the city of Vilnius, into a zone of the margins created in the mind. Kopa invites us to follow the threads of thoughts and to engage in a state of weightlessness, of waiting, of hope, when the old has ended but the new has not yet begun.

According to the artist, the essence of transitional spaces and states is the discomfort brought by change. The reflections and changes in her personal work reflect the state of change felt in the collective consciousness. Change and flux are permanent for the artist. Jaqcues Derrida defines liminal states in terms of "différance", which involves the process of tracing chains of meaning. This tracing is never complete because meaning is always deferred and always changing. Kopa's works and words are connected by "threads" leading from one meaning to another.

"I Don't Know. I Don't Understand. I Have No Idea." arises from the change of the creative process. Kopa, experiencing transformations in her creativity, draws a mind-map of old and new works. Old ideas build the foundation for new artworks, while the network of ideas, and the sequence of thoughts that have taken on a material expression, create the possibility of experiencing the emergence of a thought, an idea.

The ideas of dissociation, depersonalisation, derealisation are important for the author. By placing her works among still immaterial ideas that exist only in the form of words and text, the artist creates a state of weightlessness and detachment, which is typical of the experience of psychological transformations, traumas, or deconstruction of old paradigms.

Kopa highlights the crumbling reality with the contrasts that dominate her work - contrasts created by light and shadow, the juxtaposition of light and shadow, or a wasp stuck on the window glass against the background of a moving urban landscape. Contrast both raises doubts and creates meanings for the exhibition. The Paneriai district, itself a marginal place of the capital, seems to be a map of the author's concentrated existential and creative ideas.

The keywords presented by the author:

Intersections; translucency/ fragility/ impermanence; temporality; spaces/ states/ phases; threshold/ transition/ displacement; contrasts; the unknown/ the unknowable/ the unknowable/ the unrecognizable/ the incomprehensible; the liminal; the uncomfortable (not knowing); the pause; the here-and-now/ the there and then.

Exhibition curator Rūta Matulevičiūtė

The exhibition is supported by Vilnius City Municipality