Liudmila Vaišnoraitė (Milda Januševičiūtė & Miša Skalskis)

Liudmila emerged from a desire to explore, through artistic means, the tension and connection between the private and the public, the individual and the collective, freedom and identity. One of the project’s core concerns is the experience of alienation – both personal and collective –that occurs within contemporary society.

Liudmila is interested in the cultural and historical shifts that have taken place since the restoration of Lithuanian independence. On one hand, this includes the desire to “escape” Eastern Europe and integrate into a broader Western European cultural space, along with the paradoxes of collective memory and traces of an inferiority complex. On the other hand, the rise of the internet and new media over the past two decades has fundamentally changed how pop culture circulates and has become a central factor in shaping the collective (and often atomised) identity of younger generations and the ways this is expressed.

Liudmila traces the intersections of personal, local histories with global culture, expressed through the use of memes, visual trends, slang and other aesthetic codes. Their work shares stories of characters shaped by cultural atomisation, who adopt anonymous forms of expression drawn from the internet and the street, or consumerist symbols rooted in the collective imagination.

Liudmila is an interdisciplinary art project by Miša Skalskis and Milda Januševičiūtė. In 2023, Liudmila held their first solo exhibition, Karmagedon, at Editorial in Vilnius, and presented performances at the opening of the Lithuanian and Estonian pavilions at the 2024 Venice Biennale, at Cell Project Space in London, at the ARS22exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma (Finland) and at the 14thBaltic Triennial. In 2021, Liudmila created the sculptural video installation fountainfor the group exhibition Tirštikliaiand the sculpture untitledfor Swans, Torsos, Hologramsat Editorial.

Last year the duo opened their second solo exhibition, Fortūna, at Kaunas Artists’ House, participated in the group show repeated words lose their meaningat Improper Walls in Vienna, and performed during the closing event of Šito pas mus nėraat MO Museum in Vilnius, at the opening of Vilnius Gallery Weekend at SODAS 2123, at Gaîté Lyrique in Paris and at Le Sucre in Lyon.