Akvilė Magicdusté – „Laukiniškiai“

Every city is a collectively created fiction. Some are built of stone, concrete, and glass. Others, meanwhile, are built of stories.

The territory is also shaped by imagination which is not limited to merely representing the world – it can actually actively participate in its creation. That is why Laukiniškiai falls exactly into this kind of structure. It is a unique settlement that reveals a distinctive system in which forms of coexistence are based on friendly exchange rather than domination.

Most often, cities draw their own borders between what they acknowledge and what they deliberately choose to ignore. However, let’s remember that beneath the paved streets, other forms of life and various states of being reign, and a different perception of time prevails. All of this rarely finds a place in the usual narrative about the city.

As we know, every city needs a myth in order to exist. Unfortunately, some cities have forgotten that they are still living out that narrative. Akvilė Magicdusté’s artworks revolve precisely around this—in her work, fiction is used not to help us escape the reality that surrounds us, yet allows us to perceive it in a new way.

In Laukiniškiai, mythology is no longer just a pile of stories about the past. It becomes a unique form of perception—a kind of language that allows us to notice relationships in which humans are no longer at the center of everything.

Like any game, the world of Laukiniškiai has its own unique rules. And they are not established in order to escape the present or avoid it, yet to be able explore all sorts of ways to live a more colorful life within it.

By transforming a territory, we also change the very stories that preserve it.

Artist: Akvilė Magicdusté
Curator: Joaquín Mora
Project coordination: Giedrė Selenytė
Communication: Milda Jankauskaitė
Production team: Arnold Barkovskis, Marius Ladyga, Lukas Stoškus, Joana Kairienė