It Used To Be a Castle

Duo show with Marta Frėjutė Editorial, Vilnius, LT 2025

Exhibition text: Egla Mikalajūnė Architect: Vytautas Gečas Poster design: Eglė Ruibytė

Layers and Joke. Interview with Marta Frėjutė and Sallamari Rantala

Article Mes buvome čia. Apie Martos Frėjutės ir Sallamari Rantalos parodą „Čia būta pilies“ Editorial erdvėje

Article Pirmi žodžiai vasaros popietę

The title It Used to Be a Castle immediately places the viewer in multiple contexts that both complement and contradict each other. On the one hand, it combines a serious, if not even a bitter, context with a lighter but no less important one – evoking history (in the broader sense), archaeology, the discovery of castles’ ruins, the imaginative narratives that follow, and the heavy context that comes with them (the creation of various metanarratives, etc.). At the same time, this ‘heavy’ context – likely overused and tiresome – is set aside to make way for castles of a different kind, built on the shore not for eternity but with the full knowledge that they will vanish within hours.

Archaeology and geology in this exhibition retain a certain romance, one that emerges as we dig deeper into the earth, encountering remnants we can barely recognize. Here, crumbs take on multiple meanings – like a handprint, a delicate two-dimensional trace of a body that also has – or once had – legs, a head, a belly button (Frėjutė’s We Were Here). The stained glass with palm prints brings several elements – often restricted to highly guarded territories – closer to the viewer and everyday life. These include Stone Age cave art, typically reserved only to a select few, and stained glass, which for centuries has served as an inaccessible cavity of coloured light in sacred spaces. In the exhibition, this heritage calms down, descending from its slightly frustrated grandeur to meet the viewer; the light becomes hazier, and the handprints draw closer to those we accidentally – or perhaps deliberately, as a joke – leave in flour while cooking in the kitchen.

Let us return to the crumbs. In this exhibition, they can also refer to sand – rock that has crumbled into the tiniest fragments, abandoning solid formations and gathering into an entirely different state of being. In Rantala’s works, sand seems to be reborn as a new kind of ‘rock’ – a bit like shelves, volumetric, yet not the kind on which one could actually place anything. Shelves, seemingly a very human object, point to something beyond humanity – something not entirely human. If you think about it, geological layers share a certain logic with shelves. However, instead of cups, there is basalt; instead of books, there is chalk. Rantala’s works, made from sand mined in the Vilnius area, reflect local existence in the present. In a world where few dwellings remain untouched by materials extracted from various corners of the Earth, these ‘shelves’ of locally sourced sand seem to restore a connection to place. And yet, in a sense, the objects made of sand grains mirror the same logic as global dwellings: these dwellings, like Rantala’s works, are composites of elements from different origins.

At this intersection of archaeology, geology, and everyday life, the so-called sekretai emerge – perhaps the most fragile archaeology in the world. Its practitioners bury beauty, already anticipating the future joy of discovery. A fossil just two minutes old! Yet, in some cases, measured in terms of joy, it is equivalent to a millennium (Frėjutė’s Sekretai).

Finally, between the sekretai that have just been hidden – and immediately unearthed – and the quarry where sand has been mined for millions of years, something emerges. It is actually so close to what happened minutes ago, yet in human perception, it may seem much closer to the sand of ancient times. Consider that strange bottle that appeared on the market when you were just a baby – a bottle containing a liquid that cleanses both stomach and sink with equal effectiveness: is it more like the sekretai you had hidden from yourself, or is it closer to something poorly understood, worn smooth by time, and no longer legible? (Frėjutė’s Based on a True Story).

The castle will soon be washed away. But for now, there is still time to see it.

Text by curator Egla Mikalajūnė

On the floor Marta Frėjutė’s glass work Based On True Story