Shadows Leave Traces

Lithuanian National Museum of Art is pleased to present the international exhibition Shadows Leave Traces. Bringing together a diverse selection of works from Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Norway, Finland, and the United Kingdom— spanning from the early 20th century to the present day—the exhibition explores the memory and imagination of the Northern landscape.

The culture of Lithuania and the wider Baltic region bears a distinct imprint of the North. Artists, travellers, naturalists, and thinkers have journeyed to the Arctic, driven by curiosity and a search for identity. At the same time, centuries of Russian imperialist policy involved the inhabitants of this region into the colonization of the North. Particularly painful are the testimonies of Soviet repression—deportations, imprisonments, forced labour, and military service in the Far North.

For the first time, artworks and archival materials reflecting these experiences and stories are presented alongside works by Finnish, Sámi, and Norwegian artists, in which the North emerges not as a symbolic or abstract space, but as a site of belonging, cultural tension, and the preservation of identity.

The connections between the Baltic and Northern regions explored in the exhibition invite reflection on embodied environmental experience, imagination, trauma, and (post)memory, viewed through the lens of the Northern—primarily Arctic—landscape. Drawing on the idea of anthropologist Tim Ingold, we propose to see the landscape not as something in front of us or opposed to us, but as something with us. The landscape is not a static image or passive backdrop, but an accumulation of past and present processes—traces of both presence and absence.

The exhibition features artworks by more than fifty artists, including A K Dolven, Kaljo Põllu, Outi Pieski, Ignas Krunglevičius, Rūta Spelskytė, Marja Helander, Ruth Maclennan, Kalervo Palsa, Suohpanterror, Viktorija Daniliauskaitė, and Jorma Puranen. It also includes artworks from the collections of the Latvian National Museum of Art, Art Museum of Estonia, Estonian Academy of Arts Museum, Finnish National Gallery / Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Rovaniemi Art Museum, Galleri Bo Bjerggaard, Lithuanian National Museum of Art, National Museum of Lithuania, and M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art among others.

Curators: Kotryna Markevičiūtė, Gabrielė Radzevičiūtė  
Exhibition architect: Povilas Marozas  
Graphic designer: Ugnė Balčiūnaitė
Coordinator: Giedrius Gulbinas
Producing architect: Mindaugas Reklaitis  
Video and sound: Vytas Narbutas  
Editor: Audra Kairienė  
Translators: Aušra Simanavičiūtė, Emilija Ferdmanaitė

For media enquiries please contact Banguolė Žalnieriūnaitė at banguole.zalnieriunaite@lndm.lt