The Saga of Lithuania explores perhaps the most pressing issue facing Lithuania today - emigration. Saga has become the main means of communication in this artistic project. Through a simple saga, we aim to establish a universal narrative. The aim of the project is to raise the issue of emigration of Lithuanian citizens, to analyse this problem through various means of artistic expression, and to stimulate public discussion. Utena is the eleventh city where we will tell the "Saga of Lithuania". We are dedicating the story - an artistic installation and an exhibition of photographs and paintings - to the 95th anniversary of the Utena Regional Museum and to the celebration of the city's festival.
In order to realise our creative idea, in December 2018 we announced a campaign to collect buttons on social networks. Thousands of people from different cities, towns, villages and hamlets across Lithuania joined in. They collected, carried, carried and sent buttons to become indifferent participants in this project. Lithuanians from Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Belarus, Germany, Australia, the USA, England, Scotland and Canada responded by sending thousands of interesting buttons, including historical buttons of famous personalities and their descriptions. The artistically transformed work clothes, symbolizing working Lithuania, and the clothes of babies born in emigrant families, also embroidered with buttons, not only make sense of the dialogue or conflict between public and private spaces, but also speak of historical, cultural and social heritage.
There are no insignificant details here. Everyone who touches this narrative is allowed to feel part of the subjective and personal experience of the story. Over a million buttons - that's how many Lithuanians left their country during the independence period. The buttons were patiently and for a long time sewn on to work clothes by disabled people in Trakai district. Those who stayed in their homeland because fate, disability, and disability made it impossible to emigrate. They sewed buttons as if they were making a rosary, as if they were saying a prayer for each person. Saga - man, saga - man...
The installation is complemented by a map of emigration made of sagas and a unique portrait of the writer Žemaitė, created by the author of this idea, the photographer Lilija Valatkienė, and the painter Vladas Merečinskas. Several works by the artist Nijolė Valadkevičiūtė (1944-2020) from the funds of the Lithuanian Artists' Union are also on display.
