The
Artist
Ieva Maslinskaite
Lives and Works in
Amsterdam, Vilnius
Ieva Maslinskaitė (Vilnius, LT, 1999) is an interdisciplinary artist working with photography based in Amsterdam, NL. Her research interest lies in destabilising binary thinking towards the environment through co-creating with other species, as well as organic and artificial processes, resulting in temporary and mutating image-based works, objects, sculptures or installations. Coming from a photography background, her practice is centred around dismantling the medium from an anthropocentric perspective and putting it back together through an ecocentric one, counteracting contemporary image culture’s aims of being fixed, reproducible, and permanent. She has participated in a number of international group shows including the Riga Photography
Biennial NEXT – 2023. Maslinskaitė holds a Bachelor of Photography from the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague.
Projects
2022
In a Pupa: relearning photography from a non-human perspective
Pupa, a stage of a metamorphic insect’s life (such as a butterfly, a moth, or a bee), occurs between the larva and the imago. It is when an insect is enclosed in a cocoon or a protective covering and undergoes internal changes—in other words, a transformation—to reach a new stage. This project aims to treat photography as if it were in a pupa: in a stage of transition, temporality, and transformation. As photography is traditionally an extremely controlled, fixed, and human-oriented process, it reflects on hierarchy within image-making. By investigating conditions in which organisms such as bacteria, fungi, and plants live, I aim to actively involve the non-human other in the photographic process in order to question the image as well as my own control as an image
maker. The process acts as a symbol for re-understanding our environment, from an
anthropocentric to an ecocentric perspective. Bacteria and fungi are invited to find home on large film negatives and continuously alter image. The images portray landscapes of the Netherlands, environments that are thoroughly controlled by humans. By growing various bacteria and fungi on the film negatives, control given back to organic processes, and the image is repurposed to become a place to live. At the same time, conventional knowledge of looking is challenged when fungi start growing out of seminal books about photography, creating organic sculptures that provide fruits for alternative
ways of knowing. It all comes together in one temporary, transformative matter that never looks or acts the same, where stillness and control are challenged.
Ieva Maslinskaite
ISSP
Show all projects
Each year every member of the FUTURES European Photography Platform nominates a set of artists and projects to become part of the FUTURES network.
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