OBSCENE WEST

Obscene West is an interdisciplinary, multifaceted project of Kaunas Artists' House that explores changes in the cultural context related to sexualities during the 1990s. The project invites a return to the 1990s—a period of social, political, and cultural turmoil in Lithuania following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The first part of the project, Obscene West. In Honey, was dedicated to the women artists active during that time. Named after Eglė Rakauskaitė's 1996 performance-video installation In Honey (Meduje), the project analysed issues of gender roles and sexualities during the transformative 1990s, and examined manifestations of the feminist movement within the Lithuanian art scene and neighbouring post-Soviet countries.

In 2023, the second part of the project, Naglis, focused on the emergence of queer culture in the 1990s and its relationship to the social environment in Lithuania and the broader region. Obscene West. Naglis presented a wide-ranging programme of eight events—performative readings, a performative tour, an exhibition, a video art programme, and a performance evening-party—featuring curators, researchers, and artists from the Baltic States and Eastern Europe.

The third part of the project explores aspects of masculinity in 1990s Lithuania, addressing their influence and the challenges they have posed—both historically and in contemporary society. Drawing on Tereškinas' 2004 study Men, Forms of Masculinity, and the Politics of Masculinism in Contemporary Lithuania, and building upon the Obscene West. BMW programme developed in 2025, the focus shifts to themes such as abstraction, hierarchy, and the body in relation to masculinity.

The BMW reference in the project’s title is drawn from Black Market Worlds, the Baltic Triennial curated by Raimundas Malašauskas at the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) in Vilnius in 2005. It also evokes the BMW automobile brand as a persistent cultural signifier of prestigious masculinity—a meaning that retains its relevance today.

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Curators: Agnė Bagdžiūnaitė & Edvinas Grinkevičius