Opening of Andrius Arutiunian and Saodat Ismailova’s Exhibition “Recurse ❍”

On October 10, Saturday, at 18:00, the international exhibition “Recurse ❍” by renowned artists Andrius Arutiunian and Saodat Ismailova opens at the Klaipėda Cultural Communication Center (KKKC) Exhibition Halls, 2 Didžioji Vandens St. The exhibition runs until December 31. The artists, exhibiting their works in Klaipėda for the first time, are like-minded souls in their creativity, both exploring intertwining themes.

The exhibition invites visitors to immerse themselves in the mythology of worlds created by Arutiunian and Ismailova, related to themes such as Eastern cosmology, including Zoroastrianism, folk knowledge, alternative dimensions of time, esotericism, life in the face of death, nature’s powers, and resource extraction leading to Earth’s transformations.

In the exhibition “Recurse ❍”, the circle is used in two ways – as a recurring motif and as a cipher. As the life cycles of planets accelerate, different historical trajectories collide and overlap, highlighting the nonlinear dynamics of cultural memory.

The exhibition features sound and moving image installations that aim to capture elements existing on the brink of extinction. In these works, devastated fictional and ancient landscapes emerge, influenced by the ideologies of those who created them and speaking of unequal distributions of life. At the same time, they reveal how life can continue after the conditions that enabled it have disappeared and how death silently lurks deep beneath the world of the living.

In the worlds created by Arutiunian and Ismailova, contemporary life and modern belief systems blend with ancestral knowledge and ancient rituals, creating uncertain chronologies. In Ismailova’s film “Melted Into the Sun,” an off-screen voice tells us: “Each new cycle seems shorter than the previous one. Eternity has become temporary, and temporality is our legacy.”

Andrius Arutiunian is an artist and composer of Armenian-Lithuanian descent, working with hybrid forms of listening, folk knowledge, and contemporary variations of cosmology. In his research, he experiments with the perception of deep time, non-Western epistemologies, and alternative methods of creating order in the world.

Saodat Ismailova is a filmmaker and artist, part of the first post-Soviet generation of Uzbekistan. Weaving memories, myths, rituals, and dreams into the fabric of everyday life, the artist explores the historically rich and multilayered culture of Central Asia, situated amidst different realities, fog, and aspirations.