Palais de Tokyo

“Les Frontières sont des animaux nocturnes / Sienos yra naktiniai gyvūnai” is a project co-organised by the Palais de Tokyo, KADIST Paris, and the Contemporary Art Center in Vilnius on the occasion of the Season of Lithuania in France.

This exhibition presents Lithuanian artists from different generations together with a collective of cultural workers from other “post-socialist” countries. It foregrounds stories from this region which until recently were overshadowed by discourses of power. By retelling them anew, can we use them to reshape the established narratives of the past and the present? This exhibition stems in particular from the ongoing geopolitical turmoil caused by the Russian war in Ukraine: two years after the start of the full-scale invasion, what sense of normalcy is still possible in countries close to this conflict that must bear witness to what seems like history repeating itself?

The title of the exhibition is borrowed from Luba Jurgenson’s essay When We Woke Up: The Night of 24 February 2022, The Invasion of Ukraine (Verdier, 2023), where the author reminds us that “borders are nocturnal animals, they move while we sleep. We must always be vigilant.” The exhibition evokes the threat of invasion, the haunting ghosts of the past occupation, and persistent systems of belief and language that carry the seeds of resilience. With imagination and poetry as political tools, the artists explore social issues and interpret complex colonial histories that are approached in terms of their visions of the future but also through pre-modern practices deeply connected to nature: the concept of energy is thus unfolded as both a spiritual drive and as a valuable extracted resource, capable of shaping politics and landscapes.

Artists: Andrius Arutiunian, Beyond the post-soviet, with Anna Zvyagintseva, Agnė Jokšė, Deimantas Narkevičius, Marija Olšauskaitė, Algirdas Šeškus, Emilija Škarnulytė, Anastasia Sosunova, Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas.

Curators: Neringa Bumblienė and Émilie Villez