Lina Lapelyte
Lina Lapelyte, They stole my soul, 2022. Installation view at Castel Gardena, Selva Gardena. Commissioned by Biennale Gherdëina ∞. Ph. Tiberio Sorvillo
Through performance, composition, song and spatial interventions, artist and musician Lina Lapelyte’s works enact subtle analyses of contemporary gender stereotypes and disciplinary conventions, while weaving these together with a light-touched, humorous sensitivity. Absurd, constructed situations and liminal experiences are encountered with ease and joy, while the artist’s minimal re-interpretation and re-deployment of pop musical tropes makes its subtle way into her audience’s unconscious experience, persistent and uncanny at once.
Lina Lapelyte, They stole my soul, 2022. Installation view at Castel Gardena, Selva Gardena. Commissioned by Biennale Gherdëina ∞. Ph. Tiberio Sorvillo
In they stole my soul, a stop-motion animation devised by the artist and inspired by the Val Gardena’s long-standing tradition of wood-carving, presents a revolutionary act captured in media res. Like a heist movie, five hundred wooden animal figurines realised by craftspeople of the Val Gardena, reminiscent of a past that saw an transformation from handicraft to industry and subsequent return to traditional forms, take their destiny into their own hands and spontaneously escape the valley and their creators, making a bid for their own autonomy and for an unknown and uncertain destiny in the valley’s surrounding forests. Anthropomorphism, the blurring of boundaries between human and non-human, and feminist critique come together in they stole my soul. Reflecting on its making, Lapelyte was particularly struck by the way in which the valley’s traditional sacred and commercial woodcarving practices appear to have been passed on from father to son along a primarily patrilinear logic. Accompanying the stop-motion animation is a soundtrack created by Lapelyte in which the artist worked with groups of people to reproduce animal sounds through the human voice.
Lina Lapelyte
Lina Lapelyte, They stole my soul, 2022. Installation view at Castel Gardena, Selva Gardena. Commissioned by Biennale Gherdëina ∞. Ph. Tiberio Sorvillo
Through performance, composition, song and spatial interventions, artist and musician Lina Lapelyte’s works enact subtle analyses of contemporary gender stereotypes and disciplinary conventions, while weaving these together with a light-touched, humorous sensitivity. Absurd, constructed situations and liminal experiences are encountered with ease and joy, while the artist’s minimal re-interpretation and re-deployment of pop musical tropes makes its subtle way into her audience’s unconscious experience, persistent and uncanny at once.
Lina Lapelyte, They stole my soul, 2022. Installation view at Castel Gardena, Selva Gardena. Commissioned by Biennale Gherdëina ∞. Ph. Tiberio Sorvillo
In they stole my soul, a stop-motion animation devised by the artist and inspired by the Val Gardena’s long-standing tradition of wood-carving, presents a revolutionary act captured in media res. Like a heist movie, five hundred wooden animal figurines realised by craftspeople of the Val Gardena, reminiscent of a past that saw an transformation from handicraft to industry and subsequent return to traditional forms, take their destiny into their own hands and spontaneously escape the valley and their creators, making a bid for their own autonomy and for an unknown and uncertain destiny in the valley’s surrounding forests. Anthropomorphism, the blurring of boundaries between human and non-human, and feminist critique come together in they stole my soul. Reflecting on its making, Lapelyte was particularly struck by the way in which the valley’s traditional sacred and commercial woodcarving practices appear to have been passed on from father to son along a primarily patrilinear logic. Accompanying the stop-motion animation is a soundtrack created by Lapelyte in which the artist worked with groups of people to reproduce animal sounds through the human voice.