Eglė Širvytė, 2022, Lithuania

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Places affect us and are often enveloped in very earthly, domestic memories. In those memories mix the links between man and nature, smells and movements. I depicted the windows from three neighbouring villages: Šeimyniškiai, Užpaliai and Trumpaliai. I am acutely aware of their impermanence, the threat of disappearance hanging over them. Nonetheless, I find so much quiet positivity in them, seeing man not as a wrecker but rather as a creator for whom it is important to create a connection with home, who cares about details.

I grew up in the village of Šeimyniškiai – and I am still in the process of growing up. This is where my hunt for sunrises and sunsets began, where I explored my way through haystacks, where I caught maybugs, where I never stopped marvelling at the sounds and birds. The village of Trumpaliai became the place where my creativity was unleashed. This is where I learned to look at things in a completely different way, see the shadows falling on them, understand the texture and thickness of the paper. There, I first experienced the flow of time, hours turning into seconds. In the third village, Užpaliai, as the name suggests, there was school and a more.