Neringa Cerniauskaite and Ugnius Gelguda, who together make up duo Pakui Hardware, have been chosen to represent Lithuania at the Sixtieth Venice Biennale, slated to take place in 2024. The pair will present an immersive installation at the Lithuanian pavilion that will include works by the modernist painter Marija Teresė Rožanskaitė (1933–2007). The pavilion is organized by the Lithuanian National Museum of Art undercommissioner Arūnas Gelūnas and curated by Valentinas Klimašauskas and João Laia.
The Vilnius- and Berlin-based Pakui Hardware are known for a practice that places both organic and synthetic materials in the service of installations and sculptures evocative of nature and the future and exploring the effects of capitalism on these. According to a press release from the duo’s gallery, Carlier Gebauer, the “kinetic” installation will investigate “inflammations” afflicting society and the environment. “Inflammation— of both human and planetary bodies—becomes the starting point to talk about the systemic harm done to a part of humanity and the earth itself,” notes the release. Pakui Hardware will place the topic at the heart of a dialogue with the work of Rožanskaitė, whose paintings as early as the 1970s explored the connections between bodies and medicine. The joint installation will merge “human and planetary scale . . ., revealing how not only our body, but also the planet’s, is ‘on fire.’”
The Fifty-Ninth Venice Biennale closed on November 27. Among the other countries who have already announced their representative artists for the next iteration are France, who tapped French-Caribbean multimedia artist Julien Creuzet, whose work investigates the diasporic experience, and the French colonial past; and Estonia, who chose sculptor Edith Karlson, whose work examines the relationship between humans and their environment. The theme for the 2024 Biennale is expected to be revealed early next year.