Titas Milašius Exhibition “Exile Crosses”

We warmly invite you to visit the exhibition “Exile Crosses” by Titas Milašius (1940–2024), an exile of 1948, currently on display in the Conference Hall of the Tuskulėnai Memorial Complex.

In 1948, Titas Milašius was deported with his family to the Krasnoyarsk region and returned to Lithuania in 1957. The woodworking and construction techniques he learned in exile became an important part of his artistic practice. In 2019, after returning from a pilgrimage to Israel, Titas Milašius returned to creating art and began making three-dimensional wooden crosses.

The artist constructed the crosses from thin strips of impregnated pine and small components, without using glue or nails. The recurring spikes in his openwork sculptures reminded him not only of Christ’s crown of thorns but also of the difficult, “thorny” lives of those deported into exile. He also created paintings from similar elements, with the cross motif at their centre.

The exhibition presents works born from personal experiences of exile, memories and a desire to preserve what he had endured. Titas Milašius dedicated one of his works, “The Golgotha of Siberian Exile,” to his mother, who survived exile alone with her three children and later brought them back to Lithuania.

Works by Titas Milašius are held in the National Museum of Art of Lithuania, and his art is also part of private collections in Lithuania and abroad. The “Exile Crosses” exhibition was previously presented at the Basilica of the Resurrection of Christ in Kaunas in 2022.

The exhibition can be visited Wednesday–Sunday, from 10:00 to 16:00.