Indrė Liškauskaitė | The Order of Toys

Roland Barthes called plastic “the very idea of its infinite transformation” – the
shapeless material of modern myth, forever swaying between forms, always ready to
be molded. From this plasticity, the toy is born: a miniature model of ideology and of play.

“Once, I noticed the bright green crocodile toy sneaking into the bedroom at night. I
became obsessed with the order of toys, searching for any hidden meanings… “
In this exhibition, order is neither pedagogical nor prescriptive. The Gallery becomes a site of distributed agency where the nonhuman playmates – Delta and Delfina – make marks, choose colours and trigger gestures. The artist does not command, but responds.

Indrė Liškauskaitė learns not to impose composition but to track it, mapping it like
constellations or abstract notation systems she often employs. These are diagrams
made in movement, traced from toys that act as vectors of motion, leaving visible
traces in shared workscapes.

“Artificial grasses soak the paint drops.”
Playground, living space, studio – three names for a single condition, where objects
are no longer passive. Toys mingle between brushes, oil pastels stick to poodle
curls, chewed sticks uphold piles of paper. Things do not serve a function but instead
they offer direction.
The material mutability that Barthes defines in plastic becomes, here, not only a
property of a substance but as a mode of relation. Plasticity is enacted in gestures
and collaboration – between human and dog, object and myth, toy and order. Forms
of care blend with soft architecture – curls, trims, gestures and textures. The surface

of play unfolds into contours: drawings acquire bodily presence, flat color begin to
sculpt space. Line slips into volume, textured form.
The shifting order of toys reveals forms of entanglement made visible through
shapes, surfaces and shared labor we learn to work within both as participants and
authors.
–
Indrė Liškauskaitė is an interdisciplinary artist and PhD researcher based in Vilnius, Lithuania. With her non-human collaborators and companions, poodle Delta and border collie Delfina, she is researching how playing with a dog(s) can become an artistic practice as well as a method to create collaborative art pieces. Liškauskaitė has a background in painting and textile studies. Currently, she is pursuing a doctoral degree at Vilnius Academy of Arts. Her works include drawings, mapping, writing, textile, sound and video pieces, also sculptural installations made of the artifacts of the companionship – dog toys, leashes, sticks, chewed sketches and
other findings. She became an agility athlete with her two dogs after reading Donna
Haraway’s When Species Meet. Liškauskaitė ironically portrays human and human
behavior in order to take a deeper look into social, cultural and philosophical
constructions that shape the inter-spieces encounters.