Jūratė Stauskaitė’s “theatre of cruelty“

Abstract

The author starts her review by recalling Jūratė Stauskaitė‘s exhibition given ten years ago and centred on the theme of the colour red. Red according to the artist, associates to her with blood. This year‘s Stauskaitė’s exhibition (it was on at Titanikas Galleries of VAA from February 26 through March 30) featured plenty of red, but overshadowed by its antipode, black. Stauskaitė’s exhibition was a true embodiment of a dynamic female energy. The interactive exhibition was a creative event combining drawing, dance movements, singer’s voice, video and insights by other artists inscribed on the wall. The closing of the exhibition was marked by a conference where artists shared thoughts of what the drawing process and a drawing represent to them. “Stauskaitė does not paint objects, but their becoming”, Mikalojus Povilas Vilutis said. Gilles Deleuze would have said the same, had his spirit been invited among reviewers of the exhibition. According to the philosopher, it is becoming, not the finite world that establishes metaphysical direction of the creation. Stauskaitė ingeniously uses the language of gesture to trace the process of becoming a woman. For the creation of her series Bolero she selected dancing women not only as models or objects on display, but as a source of inspiration. Stauskaitė was never interested in Antonin Artaud’s theatre of cruelty, her acquaintance with Deleuze is superficial. No artist really needs that. She simply trusts her intuition and takes, unawares, the path discussed by Artaud and Deleuze, transforming a bodily gesture into modern man’s metaphysical event of self-perception. The Bolero series by the artist could be used as an illustration to an essay of Artaud’s collection Theatre and Its Double. The graphic artist reveals the invisible at the first sight syndrome of female nomadismVytauto Didžiojo universitetasŠvietimo akademij