Anastasia Sosunova – Gossip Workshop, 2024

Anastasia Sosunova juxtaposes personal and collective histories, memories of past events, legends and reinterpretations of classical mythology. She explores the power of systems of control, traditions and beliefs that shape the behaviour of individuals and communities in the modern world. Through etchings, sculpture and video, the artist creates new forms of “contemporary folklore”.

Rotas, one of the first printing houses in Lithuania after independence, not only published general literature but also, for three years, the first Lithuanian gay magazine, Naglis. The printing house, located in Vilnius, was also a tacit place of employment for the country’s gay community. Now abandoned, the building’s windows have become a graffiti board for people and lovers, who write their initials on the dusty glass. Anastasia Sosunova has reproduced their dimensions and motifs on offset plates, which she presents as such, exposing the materiality of the printing plate. Alongside these, small formats on paper feature scraps from Naglis juxtaposed with the motifs of those tags — a combination of dissident love affairs and contemporary pilgrimage.