Klaipėda Biennial: Sunset Every Two Years

The inaugural edition of the Klaipėda Biennial—titled Sunset Every Two Years and curated by Valentinas Klimašauskas—takes “transit” as its conceptual departure point. Derived from the Latin transitus, meaning passage or change, transit is explored not just as physical or temporal movement, but as a state of transformation—planetary, ecological, historical, political, and poetic.

The Biennial unfolds through several interlinked thematic lenses.

First, the Biennial itself—by nature a recurring event—functions as a transitory phenomenon. In astronomy, a transit marks one celestial body passing across another. The title Sunset Every Two Years evokes both Klaipėda’s poetic identity as ‘the city of sunsets’ and a suspended, desynchronised sense of time. It reflects modernity’s contradictions, where planetary and personal time intersect, and art becomes a site of convergence.

Second, transit speaks to Klaipėda’s layered and often turbulent history, shaped by a century of political, urban, and social shifts. This is reflected in the Biennial’s engagement with the past, particularly through historical and vernacular photography.

Third, Klaipėda’s role as a port city—moving freight, passengers, and ideas—underscores transit as both infrastructure and metaphor. In Ancient Greek, metaphor means transference or relocation. This becomes a curatorial and poetic strategy. The exhibition includes works previously shown elsewhere, whose relocation and recontextualisation are integral to the Biennial’s conceptual framework.

Fourth, the region’s ecological space has long been shaped by political activism and environmental resistance. Early examples include Angakoko sugrįžimas (Return of Angakokas), a 1990 protest-performance by Žalias lapas against oil drilling, and the 1989 campaign for Neringa’s national park status. The Biennial addresses ecological and informational toxicity—from dumped chemical weapons to industrial pollution—highlighting the Baltic Sea’s precarious state.

Fifth, this “sunset land” is also a regenerative space—for rest, wellness, sexuality, and rebirth. As a resort and symbolic edge of the world, Klaipėda becomes a site where time slows, bodies are liberated, and new experiences—perhaps even new worlds—can emerge.

Through these lenses, the Biennial explores transit not only as movement or relocation, but as a historical, logistical, ecological, extractivist, aesthetic, and poetic condition for speculative futures.

The first Klaipėda Biennial (KB1) responds to the absence of large-scale, recurring contemporary art events in Western Lithuania. This international edition unfolds across the Klaipėda Cultural Communication Centre (KCCC) and public spaces in the city, focusing on the region’s maritime history and its ties to the broader Baltic Sea.

Valentinas Klimašauskas is a curator, writer, and director of the Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, since January 2025. Recently, he curated the Lithuanian pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2024 (with João Laia, artists: Pakui Hardware and Marija Teresė Rožanskaitė). Together with João Laia, Valentinas curated The Endless Frontier, the 14th Baltic Triennial at CAC Vilnius (2021). With Inga Lāce, they curated Saules Suns, a solo exhibition by Daiga Grantina for the Latvian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2019). Klimašauskas is the author of Telebodies. Bleeding Subtitles for Postrobotic Scenes (Mousse Publishing, 2024)

Participating artists: Gabrielė Adomaitytė, Matti Aikio, Bernardas Aleknavičius, Madeleine Andersson, Tekla Aslanishvili, Arūnė Baronaitė, Nina Beier, Vitalijus Butyrinas, Adam Christensen, Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, Dovilė Dagienė, Vytautas Daraškevičius, Doooooris, Milda Drazdauskaitė, Irena Giedraitienė, Henrikas Gulbinas, Karla Gruodis, Vidmantas Ilčiukas, Agnė Jokšė, Edith Karlson, Joachim Koester, Algimantas Kunčius, Česlovas Lukenskas, Paulius Makauskas, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Paulina Mongirdaitė, Katja Novitskova, Vitalija Petraitytė, Rodion Petroff, Emilija Povilanskaitė and Clara Schweers, Romualdas Požerskis, Liudvikas Ruikas, Janina Sabaliauskaitė, Julija Skudutytė, P. Staff, Marija Sučilaitė, Malka Sultan, Veronika Šleivytė, Virgilijus Šonta, Aske Tiberg, Viktor Timofeev, Remigijus Treigys, Gintautas Trimakas, Raimundas Urbonas, Lesia Vasylchenko, among others.

Biennial team
Commissioner: Liudas Andrikis  / Curator: Valentinas Klimašauskas / Assistant Curator: Viktorija Misiulė / Architect: Gabrielė Černiavskaja / Producer: Žana Jegorova / Coordinators: Justina Trapokaitė, Gabija Savickaitė / Education Program Curator: Daura Polonskytė / Education: Aurelija Šiuškaitė, Jolanta Uktverytė / Copywriting: Banga Elena Kniukštaitė / Translations: Alexandra Bondarev, Paulius Balčytis / Proofreading: Dangė Vitkienė, Gemma Lloyd / Graphic Designer: Vytautas Volbekas / Main Partner: Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius.

The Klaipėda Biennial is funded by the Klaipėda City Municipality, the Lithuanian Council for Culture and the Danish Arts Foundation.