Already in the first works of Laura Stasiulytė, several key themes emerged that remained important in her later works: what is ethnic identity, how is it formed and implemented through education and media, how do the oppositions of self/alienation, local/foreign affect interpersonal relations, who am I in the system of different languages/mentalities/ideologies. In her early works, Stasiulytė resists her own experience and visualises her ideas with performative gestures, e.g., She tries to remember Lithuanian folk songs and poems that she has to learn in school and physically carries this "baggage of knowledge" on her back in the form of a monitor while interacting with strangers ("Intention to Remember", 1999), or she desperately attempts to overcome her sense of isolation and announce her own existence by trying to turn the street lamp directly into her window ("Lamp Catcher", 2002). When different languages and cultures make it difficult to communicate, the artist seeks a relationship through touch: patiently unrolling 625 cassettes made by a Senegalese artist, counting them in German ("Counting the Cassettes", 2002), dismantling and ironing an Ikea rug made from shreds in Pakistan ("Rug", 2002), symbolically uniting with the toil of the people who made the rug in a far-away country by this week-long work, literally touching an unfamiliar culture. In her later works, the artist more often adopts a strategy of observation and often tries to completely neutralise her subjective contribution, for example, by using a surveillance camera (Nadezhda / Hope 2003/2004, Black and White Film, 2007/2008) or the appropriation of photographs (Aruodas, 2007). Along with the strategy of observation, her work is more focused on the socio-economic situation and representation: Signs of supermarket power and forms of representation of corporate events ("Gala", 2005), the hypertrophied nationalistic presentation to strangers arriving on a giant cruise ship ("Arriving Ship", 2007), the traces and fates of private lives in the real estate business ("Aruod", 2007), the reflections of dynamic socio-economic changes in the history of the individual ("Nadezhda. After 5 years", 2009). One of the main objects of the artist's attention is language. In her works, texts are read, recited, sung and handwritten: The artist herself attempts to recite and sing ("Intention to Remember", 1999), or the ordinary impressions of her ordinary day are recorded by a singing boy ("Everyday Speech", 2000); the handwritten notes of the girls she speaks to on the street are used to transcribe the questions of their peers about their sexual lives, published in the magazine "Panelė" ("From the Lives of Panels", 2001); a Russian woman who has come to Lithuania learns Lithuanian and English at the same time by voice ("Nadezhda / Hope", 2003/2004), and an artist deconstructs the ideology encoded in a German textbook from her school days by reading and combining fragments of the textbook in a new way ("Searching for the teddy bear Brumel", 2006); London Lithuanians go to a Lithuanian food shop not so much to shop as to talk to their "own" in their own language, to satisfy the need for communication ("Black and White Film", 2007/2008). Stasiulytė's works analyse language as the centre of personal identity and a fundamental tool of ideology (she often returns to the times of school or adolescence and examines how language shapes ethnic or gender identity and worldview), as the basis of social isolation or integration (the exclusion of speakers of other languages and the attempts made to overcome it), and as an opportunity or an obstacle to interpersonal relations (the limits of language/communication and the attempt to expand it by means of touch and gesture). The research on language and identity continuously brings the artist back to the theme of memory and time - recalling her childhood, drawing parallels between the present and the past, for example, images seen in stereoscopic slides from the coast of the Black Sea given to her by her grandmother. In her later works, the question of ethnic and cultural identity is not only analysed through the prism of language, but other forms of representation are also observed and documented. For example, the visual standards of presentation of business structures are explored - the design and script of corporate events, the postures, gestures and rules of behaviour of the staff attending them, as opposed to the old order represented by illegal Russian-speaking gardens on the edge of the new supermarkets (Gala, 2005); documenting Lithuanian songs, dances, and clothing that speak of ethnic stamps and national complexes, as they greet the tourists of a giant cruise ship who are eager to call at a small port in a small country ("The Arriving Ship", 2007); exploring the images and texts with which people present their private real estate (Aruod, 2007) or how the changing order is represented by the new character's workplace, a glowing newsstand, which has replaced the Monuments Restoration Institute, which has been demolished in the wake of the reckless new construction (Nadezhda. After 5 years", 2009). The artist's works use and combine various forms of expression - video documentation, slide projections, photographs, sound recordings, texts and drawings.
