From August 28 to September 25, Dovilė Dagienė’s exhibition “Osmosis” is open at Kaunas Photography Gallery (Vilniaus g. 2). The exhibition is curated by Adam Mazur.
Here, the artist develops a creative dialogue with one of the most important figures in the history of Lithuanian photography, Balys Buračas. In 2020, Dagienė became the first woman to receive the Balys Buračas Photography Art Award, and she accepted this award as a challenge to take a fresh look at Buračas’ archive, paying particular attention to portraits of women, their environment, and traces of everyday life.
“Photography has always been a form of osmosis. Light penetrates the lens, reacts with chemicals, and leaves a trace,” writes Adam Mazur. In Dagienė’s works, this process becomes a metaphor that allows different times and stories to merge. Old photographs by Buračas permeate the author’s contemporary works, and the present permeates the archive images, thus creating a space where the past and the present influence each other.
“Osmosis” is not an attempt to heroize history or search for the essence of Lithuanian photography. It is an intimate and empathetic gaze that highlights the stories of marginalized women, their silent existence, and details of their everyday life and nature—gardens, vegetable gardens, flower gardens. Dagienė’s works invite us into an open process in which the archive becomes not a closed document, but a permeable membrane that absorbs our emotions, relationships, and memories.
The exhibition is partly funded by the Lithuanian Council for Culture and Kaunas City Municipality. The patron of Kaunas Photography Gallery is AON, main sponsor is letsinvest.eu.