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- Backgrounds, 2025
Simonchuk Julia-Anna
Backgrounds is a response to the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights (former KGB headquarters and detention centre) in Vilnius, Lithuania.
The cells and corridors have typical institutional walls – divided into two colour sections. When encountered from up close, the area where one colour meets another can look like austere and deserted fields. The palimpsests of earth are preserving the evidence of violence and so are the layers of paint on the walls (repainted about 20 times to cover blood and inscriptions).
The ‘landscapes’ on the walls are co-existing with the actual landscapes which were filmed near Paneriai, Ninth Fort and Glitiškės massacre memorials near Vilnius and Kaunas.
Credits: Valera Simonchuk, Evaldas Visockas, Thomas Jenkins, Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights
Originally from Kyiv, Ukraine, Julia has been based in London since 2019. She graduated with honours from BA Fine Art course at Central Saint Martins (UAL) and MA Fine Art course at Slade School of Fine Art (UCL).
Julia is working across media, including drawing, sculpture, collage, printmaking and moving image. She is often engaging in interdisciplinary collaborations with academics, theatre collectives and musicians.
Her art practice is informed by research into history as well as personal experiences of witnessing history-in-making. She is working with the questions of power, ideology, memorialisation, hauntology, and time.