Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas
Born in Lithuania. Both educated at Vilnius Art Academy, gaining MAs in visual arts in 1994. In 1997 co-founded the Jutempus interdisciplinary art program – a model for social and artistic practice interested in designing organisational structures that question the relativity of freedom. In 2000 co-founded Vilma – Vilnius Interdisciplinary Lab for Media. They live in Vilnius and also spend time working in Stuttgart where they are connected with Akademie Schloss Solitude and the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart.
Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas conduct artistic research that explores the reclamation of public culture in the face of overwhelming privatization. Often beginning with archival research, they have developed complex participatory works investigating architecture and the urban environment, and cultural and technological heritage. In parallel to their studies at the Art Academy of Vilnius in the nineties they founded an independent art program Jutempus which centres on the interfaces between social and artistic practice and enquires after the position of contemporary art in (post-Soviet) society.
In 2005, they initiated the Pro-Test Lab, a project abolishing the borders between art, protest and civil commitment. Beginning as a case study of the destruction of the cinema theatre it has developed into a space and an archive of various forms of protest (and legal proceedings) against the corporate privatization of public space. Their work has been exhibited at Documenta11 in Kassel, MACBA in Barcelona and the Ludwig Museum in Budapest. In 2007 they were the Lithuanian Pavilion artists at the 52nd Biennial in Venice.
- Literature
- MIT, "A flow of creativity: MIT’s Gediminas Urbonas emerged from the old Soviet Union to produce new art in Cambridge", December 2012.
- External links
