Šarūnas Kvietkus

In the project, I analyse the economic lithuanian migrant cultural and value basics in relation to the native land and general significance of the soil for the Lithuanian emigrant community. In the historical context of the lithuanian migration in the Soviet era, intelligent lithuanians were exiled into Siberia forced labour camps, others fled to western countries to avoid it. The great loss of their homeland was seen in arts, mostly literature, often referred by the motives of the Lithuanian soil itself, which became the most expressive Lithuanian cultural allegory of homeland. In the context of the contemporary free migration, ambiguity lies in the importance of both Lithuanian identity and the relationship with the native country. Lithuanians are forming big communities in foreign countries in that way affecting locations identity and environment. Also, emigrants themselves are changed by the locations that they emigrated to. That is why the problematic question occurs in my work. Does the modern Lithuanian emigrant still have the same personal importance for the homeland as expressed by past generations?

Which piece of soil is more important for contemporary migrant, the one that was created abroad or the one they originated from? Now a day almost half of the current emigrants decide to live in United Kingdom. The locations of the photographs taken in the project were the areas of land were the largest Lithuanian communities in the United Kingdom is based. These regions are: Beckon- Newham region in London, Peterborough and Boston. Sometimes in Lithuanian and British media these regions are even called “little Lithuanians”. 

Later I on photographic level, in the darkroom, physically transferred Lithuanian lands, thus fusing the two locations, dissolving the distance between the two, causing ambiguity, inability to recognise or identify them apart in the aim to confuse watcher into uncertainty as same as Lithuanians are facing with the identity, displacement and non-belonging problematics. 

Šarūnas Kvietkus was born in 1996. He is a conceptual photographer based in Kaunas and studies at the Kauno Kolegija Justino Vienožinskio Faculty of Arts, Photography department. In his works, he analyzes humanity, both as cultural groups and as individuals, their interactions, relations and reactions with their surroundings. His research focuses on psychology, philosophy, sociology and neurology. He likes to experiment with several techniques: traditional and alternative light sensitive materials and different cameras.