Relational aesthetics in Lithuanian jewellery or what is absent in the art of Neringa Poškutė-Jukmienė

Neringa Poškuė-Jukumienė.

Photo by Ingrida Mockutė-Pocienė

Relational Aesthetics in Lithuanian Jewellery, or What is Absent in the Art of NERINGA

POŠKUTĖ-JUKUMIENĖ

By Jurgita Ludavičienė

Creators of Lithuanian designer jewellery rarely step outside their field of work. This should not necessarily be viewed as criticism, since each medium has its own game rules, field of effect and means of expression, and jewellery by itself is a very lonely art field. What I mean by that is mostly the circumstances of its creation, typically requiring specific means, materials, tools and devices, all of which must fit into the workshop, which in turn requires concentration and detachment. Creation of jewellery takes more than one day, and usually more than one week or even a month.

On the other hand, for the past half a century, designer jewellery has not been simply about making it (we still don't have a word that could be used with jewellery without referring to decoration). It is a field closest to the body, a field where communication between the creator and the wearer is extremely important. And a field that creates signs for the body which can also become signs for the society. They can, but rarely do so.

The involvement of creators of designer jewellery in relational art in Europe should be dated to the beginning of the last decade of the 20th century, when jewellers no longer had to prove their conceptuality and modernity, their belonging to the sphere of art rather than craft. Relational aesthetics is a term coined by the French critic and curator Nicolas Bourrioud; this is how he described open, unfinished, interactive works, where the most important thing is the process of communicating with the audience. At the time (last decade of the 20th century) in Lithuania, jewellers opened a group exhibition in the Pamėnkalnis Gallery with a performance, acting almost synchronously with their Western colleagues; there was a number of subsequent attempts to step out of the frame of decorativeness, such as “Desmurgija” by Algis Mikutis and Ąžuolas Vaitukaitis, and “Priekūniai” by Sigitas Virpilaitis, however the vast majority of such Lithuanian pieces of jewellery remained within the limits of the exhibition space/showcase. At best, they were taken from the workshop or gallery to be placed onto their wearer's clothes, thus completing their mission. Neringa Poškutė-Jukumienė who has been consistently conducting her jewellery research program over the past decade can undoubtedly be called the most prominent (if not the only) representative of relational aesthetics in the field of contemporary Lithuanian jewellery. After refocusing from creation to research, she demonstrates her aspiration to constantly expand the fields of effect, while still remaining in the field of designer jewellery but at the same time abandoning many of the things that traditionally define jewellery, or questioning common concepts, definitions and materials. “OMG”, the solo exhibition of N. Poškutė-Jukumienė held in Telšiai Gallery, is so far her most comprehensive story of what remains

important when the goal is no longer the object, but the process, and which things crumble away as unnecessary metal shavings.

And the first things that crumble away are objects. It may seem that artists simply aim to create enduring work which would stand the test of time and speak of eternal things even many years later. This is not true. At least not for Neringa. Acronyms and sheet gold on the skin, pots that turn into accessories or a column, the sound produced by metal rhombuses thrown into a magnetized steel sheet, a proposal to try on metal regalia in front of a mirror, a golden flag blowing in the wind at the entrance to the gallery – there is a lot of everything and everything speaks of the desire to attract, involve and provoke the viewer here and now. So that he would “bring his body” to the exhibition and turn into a showpiece himself here and now. What happens to the works later is not so important, since they already fulfilled their function. In one of her interviews, the author said: “The first impulse of a creator is typically to put his works in display cases and keep them there. But what I care about is provocation. I aim to get my work out of the showcase. I want the viewer, who was provided with active new information thanks to the artwork, to also discover the medium of the jewellery. To stop looking at a piece of jewellery as if its only possible form is a cold untouchable object placed inside a showcase, and its material value is the only valuable thing that it has.”

The works of Neringa PoškutėJukumienė are process-based, not object-oriented. Even when they are tangible and material. Or golden. And this is the second thing absent in the author’s work: the value of the object. In jewellery, value means a lot; it is one of its distinctive features. Jewellery goldsmiths, designers, and artists encrust an abundance of sapphires, rubies and diamonds in platinum and gold, thus creating added value for these materials which are already precious and valuable by themselves. This was (and still is) common, unless of course you are not a creator of designer jewellery, such as those artists from the seventh decade of the last century who were rebelling against the use of expensive materials in jewellery and transferred value from the material to the artistic plane.

However, Neringa Poškutė-Jukumienė is unique in her own way. She uses gold, refusing to see it as valuable. To be more precise, gold, as one of the most important metals used in jewellery and one of the equivalents of value, exists in this exhibition in all possible forms, none of which generate value by themselves. The golden flag blowing in the wind at the entrance of the gallery immediately points to irony – it's like a sign that everything you see when you enter the gallery will be sprinkled with gold dust, which, however, should not be taken seriously. There is a lot of gold in our lives, but it is fake – or if it's real, it doesn't mean anything. This is exactly what the artist was talking about when exhibiting a “golden” jacket that can still be seen in shop windows, or “golden” shoes, fiercely advertised in all the shoe stores a few years ago. Golden thoughts, written in gold on the wall. The real gold here is the cast of the

author's fingers with a gold ring on one of them. Is this a reference to King Midas whose touch turned everything to gold? And we remember how things ended for him. Therefore, Neringa PoškutėJukumienė tried to cover fragments of her body with gold foil during a filmed performance, specifically the parts that we typically decorate – wrists, neck – to show the temporary nature of such decoration and (of course) to question the necessity of gold.

Gold always becomes more expensive in times of crisis, when money depreciates. Gold is the guarantee of banknotes issued by the state. Investment gold (as I write this, my imagination begins to draw gold bars stored in underground vaults) and the like. However, everything is simply a matter of agreement. Especially gold. We ourselves have decided that this particular metal will be valuable. It is simply a social construct that humanity itself has formed and decided to follow. In Gold We Trust, as ironized by the artist, and I can't help but remember another creator of original jewellery – Swiss artist David Bielander who gives his gold jewellery a cardboard appearance. At first glance, you wouldn't even guess that this is not a cardboard bracelet.

Another thing abandoned by N. Poškutė-Jukumienė in her exhibition (and her work) is permanence. A piece of jewellery seems to assume that it will be created with a lot of love and patience, will be valuable materially (we have already discussed and rejected this), and will last for a very long time. Maybe it will even be passed down from generation to generation. Meanwhile, Neringa creates her works from random objects and steel scraps, from mirrors and pots. They are meant to move the viewer around and within them. They do not work without participants. It is necessary for these works (and the author) that the people coming to see the exhibition experience it with their whole bodies. Back in her interview in 2021, the artist said: “I never shy away from additional “game” elements showing that an object is really just a thing until you start playing with it. This means that any conceptual jewellery object can express its main idea only with the help of the body.” The viewer must bring his body and become a component of the exhibition. In this case, for example, a city mayor, since Neringa enables the viewer to try on the regalia: while standing in front of the mirror, he must find a body position in which the stylized diamond-shaped (we'll talk about this later) regalia would “climb” onto his shoulders, giving the temporary player the status of a city ruler. Mirrors and rhombuses appear in the exhibition in various forms, provoking the viewer to play instead of encouraging his narcissism. Suggesting not to look at himself once again, but to simply try on the epaulettes of someone else. Without the viewer, the works of Neringa Poškutė-Jukumienė would remain silent. On the one hand, this brings her work closer to traditional jewellery, for which the body of the wearer is also unconditionally necessary, but, on the other hand, this is also performance work where jewellery is used only as much as it is needed to cut a rhombus out of metal and cover it with coloured enamel.

Moving forward, I am counting what else was rejected by the author, and this is the point where we should go back to relational aesthetics – the aim to engage the audience in an active relationship and receive its response to the social and political context. N. Poškutė-Jukumienė doesn't care about the static, asocial or apolitical state, and this is probably the thing that distinguishes her the most from the field of Lithuanian designer jewellery. She always keeps her finger on the pulse, on the political vein connecting Lithuania, Belarus (this is where I remember her work reflecting the protests in Belarus) and Ukraine, which can be seen in the rhombuses used in her works, covered in the colours of the flags of countries that are suffering.

She reacts to the corrupt games of politicians, to the remnants of the Soviet system in Klaipėda, the city where she lives, and to the sexist and patriarchal aspects of everyday life. You can tell from her performative, changing and interactive jewellery what the artist cares about and, most importantly, that she truly CARES. That she tries to get involved, break through and blend in instead of retreating, separating or distancing herself. Just like the Dutch artists Atelier Ted Noten or Dinie Besems who, in the last decade of the 20th century, asked their audience to provide random objects and remade them, set up a machine in the Amsterdam's red light district, which enabled to buy a ring for a prostitute, etc. Interesting things were (and still are) happening, however at the moment Neringa is the only jeweller in Lithuania who is playing with the audience; it is not surprising that viewers often shy away or generally try to immediately leave the uncomfortable interactive space. However, this does not discourage the author. If there will be no one who will dare to try on the ring or the crown of a city ruler, she will still not stop, and will continue to throw metal rhombuses into a sheet of metal, build a column from kitchen pots stacked on top of each other, or create accessories from enamelware.

She doesn't care about being serious and plays with all the said categories, turning objects, images and words upside down. Acronyms which the author loves so much, accessories, meanings and values, sounds and movements, clanking of metal and bottomless pots, a chair that turns into a backpack, which Neringa carried from the central square of Klaipėda to the beach during her geographical performance, rhombuses cut from yellow-black barrier/warning tape – it all comes together in a sort of a metagame where metal and jewellery are simple parts of various other aspects. Her works have no end. They can come to life at any time, when physical, social and political circumstances change and another space opens up. And then other constellations will form, along with other acronyms. For now, the author ironically destroys faith in material things, balancing between OMG and WTF (which are the names of the works that are part of the exhibition), and sees the world through the shape of a rhombus. Because the said shape allows you to play in many ways: a yellow-black barrier tape spreads out into rhombus shapes; a rhombus symbolizes a diamond, and it was the rhombus that was once drawn on the streets of Kaunas as a warning sign. After drawing a rhombus instead of a circle on the floor of the Telšiai Gallery, Neringa Poškutė-Jukumienė throws metal rhombuses into tin, making a racket and thus saying that jewellery is not necessarily a quiet and solitary art.