This year’s “Eterio sūkuriuose” features photographers and artists from Ukraine Tati Frank and Alexey Tseitlin, Paata Vardanashvili from Sakartvelo, Ilze Onzule from Latvia, and Lithuanians Rimvydas Vaitkevičius, Ričardas Šileika, and the plein air organizer Marius Abramavičius Neboisia.
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About 60 photographic works are planned to be created during the plein air. However, numbers are not the most important here – what matters more is what happens when an artist spends some time in a new place, walks new paths, talks to strangers who become acquaintances, and allows the environment to become part of the creation.
Artists from four countries in the plein air
Tati Frank and Alexey Tseitlin are artists and photographers originally from Ukraine, living and creating in Lithuania. In their work, they pay much attention to the human being – their self-expression, emotions, and relationship with themselves. They create personal and artistic photo sessions about self-expression and self-love. For the artists, not only the aesthetic image is important but also the person’s story, state, and ability to open up and freely express themselves in front of the camera. Their photography becomes not only a portrait but also a meeting with the person.
Paata Vardanashvili is a professional photographer, traveler, and certified mountain guide from Sakartvelo. He has earned the title of “Best Mountain Guide” from the Sakartvelo Guides Association and was recognized as the best photographer in 2023. Travels, mountain landscapes, cultural heritage, and people’s lives form an important part of his work. P. Vardanashvili is also the author of several books, creates video stories, and has been organizing the folklore festival “Chevsurų vakaras” in Tbilisi for twenty years.
Ilze Onzule is a Latvian photographic artist who began her creative activity in 2019 and has been leading the photographers’ association “Stāstnīca” since 2021. She mostly creates portraits, understanding photography as a way to meet a person and look into their inner world. In her portraits, the person is not just a model – they become a bearer of life and their own story. I. Onzule has held three solo exhibitions, and her latest exhibition “Sutikti” is traveling through exhibition spaces in Latvia and Lithuania.
Ričardas Šileika is a photographer, poet, writing and constantly picking at the surface of everyday life. He describes himself as a sandman, ironworker, postcard writer, ironist, nitpicker, and tinkerer, and additionally as a photographer and writer. Small, accidental, often unnoticed details are important in his work, where time, people, and environment unexpectedly open up.
Rimvydas Vaitkevičius is a photographer living in the Zarasai region, for whom place, people, and memory are important in his creative perspective. Photography becomes a way for him to notice the environment, its people, and moments of everyday life, preserving what may disappear over time.
Marius Abramavičius Neboisia is an artist, photographer, poet, one of the founders of the Užupis Republic, and the initiator of “Eterio sūkurių.” In this stage of the plein air, he participates not only as an organizer but also as one of the photographers, searching together with other creators for a unique relationship with the Ignalina region.
In photographs – meetings with nature, people, and… oneself
“Eterio sūkuriai” was conceived from the beginning as a plein air where photography is inseparable from a subtle sense of the world, from traveling in nature and live meetings with new people, sometimes strange, sometimes ordinary but mostly unexpected. Therefore, this year the creation will unfold not only in the spaces of the Ažvinčiai Art Center in Pažieviškė but also in Švedriškė, Kazitiškis, and Salakas, where artists will meet local people.
Open creative sessions and workshops are planned here, to which everyone who wants to look at their environment through the eyes of a photographer will be invited, – says the plein air initiator M. Abramavičius Neboisia. – For a photographer, a place is never just a background. It has its own light, scent, sound, people’s memory, and stories. Therefore, in “Eterio sūkuriuose,” not only the result of photographing is important but also being – walking, observing, conversations, unexpected meetings, and waiting. Sometimes it is precisely during waiting that the one unique shot appears, which cannot be planned.”
The images created during the plein air will later travel around Lithuania. In the exhibition cycle called “Eterio šviesa,” the photographs created by the artists will meet viewers at the Dusetos Art Gallery from August 29, at the Birštonas Kurhauzas from October 23, and at the Kazitiškis Library in Ignalina district in November. What was discovered in the forest silence, on village roads, among people and accidental moments will later become visible to others in new spaces.
The photo plein air journey will be accompanied by a film: “The camera will capture not only the photographed images but also what usually remains off-frame – mornings, travels, conversations, views from the sky, searching, accidental meetings, waiting, and the moment before the image finally becomes a photograph. From these fragments, a documentary story about people and places, about different photographers’ perspectives and one shared week, which gradually turns into a story of images, will be created.”
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From Užupis to Ažvinčiai
The Ažvinčiai Art Center began to form in 2020 in the Ignalina region when one of the founders of the Užupis Republic, an artist M. Abramavičius Neboisia, who lived and created in Užupis for many years, decided to continue his creative journey surrounded by nature and lakes.
“The Užupis experience was transferred here not as a specific copy of city culture but as an idea that art needs a space where one can meet, experiment, create, and be together,” says M. Abramavičius Neboisia. – Thus, the Ažvinčiai Art Center was born – a place where art unfolds, where it incarnates from the swirls of ether.”
In 2021, works born during the first three projects – “Imagination on Water,” “Oracle,” and “Imagination Above the Forests” – were presented at the international contemporary art exhibition “Dances of Imagination” at the Ignalina Regional Museum. The exhibition featured 26 paintings, photographs, and sculptures created by nine Lithuanian and foreign artists.
Later, the activity of the Ažvinčiai Art Center increasingly focused on the connection of different art fields and the local environment – photography, painting, sculpture, land, and environmental art projects began to be implemented here. A sculpture, nature, and land art park is being created in the center’s space, where works become inseparable from the forest, fields, sky, and the place itself.
One of the center’s most prominent projects became the international photography plein air “Eterio sūkuriai,” funded by the Lithuanian Council for Culture. The first plein air took place in 2023 in Palūšė and Naujas Daugėliškis, where Lithuanian and Sakartvelo photographers met. The second plein air in 2024 expanded to Švedriškė and Salakas and brought together Lithuanian and Ukrainian artists. The works created during the plein airs were later presented in exhibitions in Utena, Ignalina, and Kazitiškis libraries and the Dusetos Art Gallery.
The center’s activity was not limited to Lithuania alone. In recent years, cooperation with artists and cultural institutions from other countries has been established, international residencies, creative workshops, and joint projects are organized. Among them is cooperation with the Nepal Academy of Fine Arts, an international artists’ plein air, and creative workshops in Nepal. Creative projects are also presented in Norway, at the art center near Trondheim “Spire” and “Gallery Li” near Kristiansund. Additionally, long-established creative ties with Sakartvelo photographers and artists and the creators of the “Hirvitalo” art center in Tampere (Finland) are maintained.
Over these years, the Ažvinčiai Art Center has become a unique place where creators of different generations, countries, and art fields meet, and the environment itself becomes not only a background for creation but also part of it.
The third stage of “Eterio sūkurių” continues this journey – this time opening even more to the person, the local community, and different cultures.
The photo plein air at the Ažvinčiai Art Center and surroundings took place from August 10 to August 17,
The photographs created by the artists will be exhibited at the Dusetos Art Gallery from August 29, at the Birštonas Kurhauzas from October 23, and at the Kazitiškis Library in Ignalina district in November-December.
