Danas Aleksa. Foot, Forehead, Vault and Key

This exhibition is a unified work by contemporary artist Dano Aleksa, interpreting the history, architecture, and construction of the Museum of Applied Arts and Design. It draws on specific terms, the main one being the arch. The arch is surrounded by the aura of engineering discoveries, military victories, and sacred buildings, and the curved forms of reconstructed arches can also be observed in the architecture of the exhibition hall itself. Danas Aleksa reminds us that the foot, forehead, and palate are forgotten terms of the builders who once constructed arches, as arches have become a rarity in construction today. Instead, it is concrete mixers that matter now, and they also become an important part of the exhibition. They increasingly move through the city, blurring and expanding the boundaries of construction, becoming part of everyday urban life. The inside of a concrete mixer resembles a shell and a screw, golden ratios and brutalists who once sang odes to raw concrete at the top of their lungs—not with their voices, but through the architecture they created.

However, the key to the exhibition is the history of the Museum of Applied Arts and Design. It is located in the eastern wing of the Great Arsenal of the Lower Castle of Vilnius. Renaissance palace buildings were constructed on the Gothic defensive walls of the Lower Castle in the mid-16th century as the residence of King Sigismund Augustus’s wife, Queen Elisabeth of Habsburg. After her death, the Old Arsenal became one of the largest in the region and the main storage facility for weapons and ammunition in Lithuania, supplying armaments to all state fortresses. Even during the Soviet era, the partly demolished Renaissance building was occupied by Soviet military forces.