Ferma

This is the story of a fortress. A domain nestled in the Lithuanian countryside, whose inhabitants are, for the most part, objects.

Wood, steel, iron, plaster, marble, glass, ceramic, stone, terracotta, pigments, fruit, and other materials combine within the space of a large industrial warehouse forming, day by day, a giant still life. A life-sized still life that, through an excess of either life or death, surpasses the human scale.

This is the realm of Marius Grušas, an artist known for his Medeinė: a sculpture depicting a woman who, with graceful composure, sits on the back of a bear. She is the Lithuanian goddess of forests and hunting. Making her way through the streets of Vilnius’ Old Town, she reminds the city that it was once a forest, and still is.

Everything is a forest. Even Marius Grušas’ fortress. And this fortress, like the forest, cannot be owned. No one possesses it, because everyone is possessed. The master of this fortress is a subject of an empire that no longer exists, or of the fear that an empire might return to take everything away. Meanwhile, the other members of the family try to escape the tyranny of things.

In this story, then, there is no king and no queen. There are no princes, and no princess waiting to be saved. If there is a princess, she will save herself, with the strength and grace of a Medeinė.

The story of this fortress begins again today, on August 7, 2025. Gabija Grušaitė returns to the places that indelibly marked her childhood to retrace a personal map of survival, and to let it be inhabited by others, finally.

To the oppressive sense of a place where everything is accumulated and preserved, Grušaitė responds with horror pleni. Her gaze slips into the gaps of a constant all-over, tracing perspectives and escape routes that otherwise seem denied.

Words, the artist’s chosen medium, weave a new narrative fabric within the space, revealing not only their deepest origin but also the possibility of going beyond themselves. This time, however, the artist’s texts do not take the form of books, as her literary career might lead one to expect, but intertwine with videos and drawings that punctuate and expand the architectural dimension of the place.

Between the hangar’s aisles, cluttered with objects, the artist films a series of tracking shots while her voice-over retraces the physical and emotional density of the space and its story. The video is displayed in a mirrored setup at both ends of the same hangar, creating an effect of echo and continuation, at once expansive and claustrophobic.

Inside a separate room, the only empty space in the entire complex, the artist offers instead the spatial coordinates of the surrounding area through a floor drawing, serving as a personal orientation tool for visitors.

This passage unfolds as a ritual of initiation and liberation, traversing Marius’ studio, house, factory, and storage to reunite them into a single, monumental work of art that transcends itself. A work that stands somewhere between monument and decay, awareness and repression, symptom and genius. A work no longer belonging to the father, but not solely to the daughter either.

Because the story of this fortress is not intimate and personal. Not only. Alongside the traumas of a family, it holds those of an entire society: a post-industrial, post-rural, post-Soviet, and post-capitalist society.

This is an invitation to a reunion. PTSD REUNION.