On the occasion of Summer in Rūdninkai, Augustas Serapinas presents a new body of works of an architectural nature based on vienkiemis: traditional wooden buildings erected in the 1920–’30s in the rural and outlying areas of Vilnius. Threatened by the general risk of decomposition and demolition, Serapinas captured these abandoned buildings located on the Lithuanian countryside. These fragments testify to a historical building tradition and question the nature and consequences of the ‘free’ movement of people and goods promised by economic and political diktats. Through the analysis and reflection that the artist undertakes on the vienkiemis, he ponders the traditional dying professions as well as the obsolescence of certain spaces. An example of a specific material tradition and creative enterprise arising out of necessity, the space of the vienkiemis – once functional and now decontextualised – opens up to the possibility to rethink how space influences and determines our bodies, encounters and consciousness.
