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LINES AND TRIBES
Installation
2018
at the group show DEPOT, Lentvaris locomotive depot, 2018
Participating artists:
Algirdas Jakas, Anastasia Sosunova, Austėja Masliukaitė, Mykolas Natalevičius, Gailė Griciūtė & Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi, Milda Dainovskytė
Curator: Milda Dainovskytė
Photos: Laurynas Skeisgiela
Cast replicas of stuffed pike — a celebratory dish popular in Eastern Europe which had its roots in the Sabbath cuisine of Ashkenazi Jewish communities — are decorated in the manner they were appropriated by the neighbouring cultures. Traditions are repeated acts in the household which become invested in territorial lines of identity, marked or unmarked on the political map of Europe. The taste of the well known gefilte fish is geographical: polish and Western Ukraine’s territories make it sweet, yet in Lithuania and eastwards it is made savory, with salt and pepper. The Yiddish language researcher Marvin Herzog has discovered that there exists a stuffed fish line which crosses Europe around 40 km from Warsaw and matches the borders of the yiddish dialect territories. In this piece, originally created for the show at Lentvaris Railway Depot — a space etched through with historically important tracks — realism and flamboyance were used as tools to contemplate on the preservation and deformation of traditions.