Dzina Jasiuniene

Born in 1974 in Lithuania. If there was a need to describe my creation in one sentence, I would say that it is kind of combination of textile and painting. Though I have completed textile studies, painting is that area, which has always attracted me in particular. And as a textile worker, I have always admired at the ethnographic heritage of different nations, handmade fabrics, carpets and embroideries. I passionately collect books about the textile of the world, and each time I open them I start feeling an inspiration to create something new.

Except traditional textile crafts, which cannot be dissociated from precision and accuracy, I am also interested in modern textile very much, which ingeniously combines traditions with up-to-date technologies. In painting's area I cannot but marvel at impressionists and expressionists, their bright colours and bristling dabs. All this is reflected in my oeuvre, in which act a brush and a needle as well as texture and facture play with each other.

For my painting, I use patterned fabrics designed for housewares, which after being stretched on the stretcher fully lose their initial daily purpose and become independent pieces of art. As distinct from painting on even surface (for example, of silk or linen), use of ornamented texture provides with an arsenal of additional possibilities.

One of my main artistic expression means is ornament. Precisely with the help of ornament, changing and transforming it with the help of colour, the multilayered impression is being created, which becomes the additional carrier of meaning. By connecting the techniques of painting and textile, I go by the way requiring not only a lot of thoroughness and precision, but presenting many surprises and discoveries as well. Whereas I use different fabrics for my painting, each started work is kind of experiment with unpredictable result. Precisely this is what charms me most of all.

While creating those "layered" ornaments, I use ethnographic motives of different nations of the world, not necessarily directly, that could be just allusions by their form or colour. In such a way, not emphasizing neither political nor social topicalities, I search for a peaceful dialogue among different cultures, which universal artistic language is comprehensible for Easterners and Westerners, Northerners and Southerners. I seek for harmony in which spicy oriental element would go in suit with the heat of southerners, west moderation andnorthern restraint, textile-type thoroughness and freedom of painting.