Disappearance of a Tribe

“Disappearance of a tribe” is the continuation series of work examining the period of radical social experiment that took place in Soviet Europe in the post war period. Also it is the period when black and white photography became accessible to everyone of that society. People were relaxed with cameras, but still giving importance to the moment when a picture was taken. | “Disappearance of a tribe” is a cinematic assembly of private photographs, which portrays the life story of a family. The photographs depict a common life in the Socialist era and that experience, which seem to have been totally lost. | The artist has travelled to locations and has recorded sounds, where images where taken some half century ago. The images are accompanied with the soundtrack composed of sounds from the places.

Deimantas Narkevicius was born in 1964 in Utena, Lithuania and lives and works in Vilnius. He graduated from the Art Academy in Vilnius as a sculptor and spent a year in London in 1992/93. On his return to Lithuania he was concerned with site-specific objects but a strong interest in narrative led him to record interviews and conversations with artists. This process evolved into an exploration of different narrative structures through film and video, the work for which Narkevicius is now best known.Narkevicius is one of the most consistent and widely recognised Lithuanian artists on the international art scene. He represented his country at the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001 and exhibits at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003 in ‘Utopia Station’ curated by Molly Nesbit and Hans Ulrich Obrist.

Since 1992 he has exhibited extensively around the world in group shows at many significant contemporary art venues and events. He showed at Manifesta II in Luxemburg in 1998 and has exhibited in London, Paris, Brussels, Vilnius, Manchester, Dublin, Vienna, Brussels, Helsinki, Stockholm, Zurich, Rotterdam, Melbourne and many other cities. Solo shows include ‘Either true or fictitious’, at FRAC Pays de la Loire in France in 2003 and ‘Deimantas Narkevicius Project’ at the Munchner Kunstverein, Munich in 2002.