OBSCENE WEST

"Obscene West" is an interdisciplinary multifaceted project of Kaunas Artists' House exploring changes in the cultural context related to sexualities during the 1990s. The project invited us to look back to the 90s - a period of social, political and cultural turmoil in Lithuania after the collapse of Soviet Union.

The first part of the project "Obscene West. In Honey" was dedicated to the women artists working at that time. The project, named after Eglė Rakauskaitė's 1996 performance-video installation "In Honey" (Meduje), analysed the issues of gender roles and sexualities of the transformative 1990s, and explored the manifestations of feminist movement in the art scene in Lithuania and in the neighbouring post-Soviet countries.

In 2023, the second part of the project, "Naglis," aimed to investigate the emergence of the queer culture of the 1990s and it’s relations to the social environment in the country and the region. "Obscene West. Naglis" consisted of a wide-ranging programme of 8 events (performative readings, performative tour, exhibition, video art programme, performance evening-party) with curators, researchers and artists from the Baltic States and the Eastern European region.

The third part of the project explores aspects of masculinity in 1990s Lithuania, examining their impact and the challenges that society has faced—and continues to face—today. Drawing on Tereškinas' 2004 study, Men, Forms of Masculinity, and the Politics of Masculinism in Contemporary Lithuania, as well as the 2025 project Obscene West. BMW programme, we will focus on themes such as abstraction, hierarchy, and the body in relation to masculinity.

The BMW reference in the project’s title is inspired by Black Market Worlds, the Baltic Triennial curated by Raimundas Malašauskas at the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) in Vilnius in 2005. It also alludes to the BMW brand as a longstanding symbol of prestigious masculinity, a meaning that remains relevant today.

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Curators: Agnė Bagdžiūnaitė & Edvinas Grinkevičius