Wooden Travel brings Lithuanian vernacular architecture in a former industrial concrete building to remind us of the fragility of our modern times, where buildings are more durable than collective memory.
Augustas Serapinas is a young Lithuanian artist who graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vilnius. Much of his artistic production revolves around his origins and the culture of his native country. The solo exhibition Wooden Travel (12 December 2024 – 15 March 2025) includes many impressions and characterizing elements of his work, which in recent years has gained him international recognition. Designed for the ground floor of ICA Milano, Wooden Travel tells stories of places and people through material memory condensed in traditional Lithuanian domestic contexts. At the core of the exhibition is the site-specific installation House of Gaidalaučizna (2024), an abandoned wooden house located in a small village 100 km from Vilnius. Over the past decade, Serapinas has purchased numerous disused Vienkiemis, traditional Lithuanian housing structures that are the last bastions of a heritage of knowledge, relationships and traditions that are at risk of disappearing. The creative process requires a lot of time and physical effort: once purchased, the houses are divided into several parts and taken to his studio in Vilnius, where Serapinas begins his work of study and reconstruction. Although many of his installations are conceived for a specific place, they then travel from exhibition to exhibition, changing their appearance and adapting to the places that host them: “I don’t want their lives to end with the exhibition,” he claims.
HOUSE OF GAIDALAUČIZNA: LITHUANIAN VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE
«After Lithuania joined the EU and with the economic and industrial development of the country, many people left the rural areas to move to urban centers, abandoning their old wooden houses», Serapinas explains. Most of these wooden skeletons are then put back on the market as a source of recycled materials and firewood. Serapinas’ enduring interest in Lithuanian vernacular architecture stems not only from the amount of symbols, meanings and memories it holds, but also from the striking contrast with the imposing modern concrete architecture. Much of the success of Wooden Travel lies precisely in the contrast between content and container – a former gas cylinder factory – and in the multitude of conversations that can arise from it, between people and the environment, between materials, between cultures and the several different notions of home. As Serapinas recalls, industrial development marked the transition from traditional construction techniques with local natural materials to the mass production of iron and concrete that characterize modern architecture. Serapinas’ practice revolves around deconstruction, both material and symbolic. While losing their residential function, his house-sculptures still convey the notion of home; for this exhibition he carefully selected and preserved some details of the Gaidalaučizna Vienkiemis. The installation is in fact enriched by fragments of the old house and ornaments, restored or reconstructed by Serapinas himself thanks to photographs and other documentary material, and which constitute artworks in their own right. Preserving these decorative elements is an additional effort to keep the collective memory alive and safeguard the knowledge of Lithuanian construction techniques. In a way, this practice pays homage to the humble people who inhabited those buildings and left their homes in search of a better life for themselves and their families.
SERPINAS’ RESEARCH AND INSPIRATION
Along the perimeter of the large room, between beams and other wooden fragments, there are two portions of burnt roof leaning against the walls (Roof of a House from Meškauščizna bracket, 2024). «Burning wood was a very common technique in the past to protect houses from external agents», explains Serapinas. But the motivation for this aesthetic choice is also symbolic: «In modern Lithuanian cities, many traditional wooden houses were burned to make room for more new concrete buildings». Serapinas’ work is in fact concerned not only with preservation, but also with reuse. His use of poor elements and waste materials recalls the materiality of the artistic movements of the post-war period, from Arte Povera to Minimalism. The raw and rough aesthetics of Roof of a House from Meškauščizna bracket recalls, for example, the materiality of Alberto Burri. While Mario Merz, famous for his igloos, archetype of inhabited places and metaphor of the different relationships between inside and outside, between individual and collectivity, also seems to have left his mark on Serapinas and his house-sculptures. Finally, Serapinas’ works, subverting spaces and their functions, trigger new spatial and human relationships. This aspect of his research is probably the result of the legacy of the relational artistic practices of the nineties, as demonstrated by some of his previous exhibitions and installations that required the participation of the public for the activation or completion of the artistic process.
WOODEN TRAVEL AND THE FRAGILITY OF OUR TIME
Like in a large puzzle that the visitor is invited to put together, ornaments and structural elements of what was once a house are scattered throughout the exhibition space on and around the main installation. Do they represent the collective memory and cultural heritage of Lithuania in its inexorable process of dissolution and fragmentation? Like wood, resistant but not eternal, our memory is indeed fragile and fickle, a victim of the passing of time. Serapinas’ work, through the deconstruction of Lithuanian vernacular architecture, addresses urgent issues such as the loss of traditional knowledge and cultures and invites us all to reflect on who we are, where we come from and what we are becoming, both as individuals and as society.
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