Karina Kazlauskaité

Bio

Karina Kazlauskaitė (b.1980), Lithuanian artist. In 2007, she graduated from the Vilnius Academy of Arts - Metal Art and Jewellery Design (MA). From 2008 to 2015, Kazlauskaitė lived and worked in Norway and held a membership in the Norwegian Association for Arts and Crafts. In 2016, she became a Lithuanian Artists’ Association (LAA) member. Since 2020 she has been elected chairperson of the Metal Section in the Vilnius branch of LAA. She has participated in exhibitions in Lithuania and other countries. Her work is part of the permanent collection Lithuanian Museum of Art - Palanga Amber Museum. Kalzauskaitė’s artistic portfolio and skills. She designs contemporary conceptual jewellery. Artist also creates unusual objects and installations, mixing jewellery with other mediums like photography, drawing and lighting. In her jewellery projects, the artist integrates different materials: classical and long-lasting like silver, steel, minerals and organic fragile substances (ostrich eggshell, fish skin, tree seeds, horsehair fabrics and other readymade elements).

Statement

My fascination with unconventional materials, animals, nature, and stories I mix in a piece of jewellery, object or installation made out of it, video performance. Often I am drawn to projects which are based on a concrete story or phenomenon. In my project, Nature as a Toy, I present my works inspired by toys. The old toys made from organics like archaic baby rattles or balloons usually were made out of the pig’s bladder (my parent’s story about memories). Pig‘s bladder, considered the waste material, is almost no longer used in Lithuania. However, I developed a technique to make and use parchments in my art objects and jewellery pieces.


Reverent games
Karina Kazlauskaitė is one of the few contemporary Lithuanian jewellers who have long and organically immersed herself in organics. A symbiotic relationship with nature, which is increasingly being discovered by artists, has been present in Karina Kazlauskaitė’s work for decades. The reason for this is her organic, reverent, and at the same time, curious relationship with the rural reality that is inseparable from the world of nature. Until not so long ago, animals were often kept in the same space where humans lived, later becoming their food. Such a way of life seemed organic and natural, as domestic animals, in exchange for warmth and care, gave their lives, meat, skin, bristles and bladders, becoming the guarantor of human survival. In her work, Karina Kazlauskaitė contemplates our relationship with flora and fauna as it is today and translates her thoughts into the language of art jewellery. Using materials and objects that are not commonly found in Lithuanian contemporary jewellery, such as pig intestines, pig bladder (today considered as waste), and parchment made from it, she talks about the links and multiple contradictions between nature and culture (human). What previously seemed natural and harmonious nowadays raises many questions - not only aesthetic but also ethical.

Organic games speak about coexistence. About the fact that we are all part of nature, a part which sometimes steps out of line - and can be punished. About the fact that man plays with nature until it loses patience and reminds us that we are just powerless toys in the hands of the elements. About the fact that we are each other’s toys. We are all one, and sometimes our bodies, instead of decomposing, go on living in different forms. What used to be unaesthetic, animalistic, and organic turns into components of modern jewellery, hidden like inclusions between organic peat briquettes and covered with domes of organic glass. And not accidentally so. Intestines and parchment, bladders and amber, a mineral of organic origin - all this, in Karin Kazlauskaitė’s interpretation, speaks about organically perceived life.
/ Jurgita Ludavičienė

CV