{"id":1980,"date":"2023-12-21T21:18:26","date_gmt":"2023-12-21T21:18:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nugu.lt\/us\/?p=1980"},"modified":"2026-04-18T20:00:03","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T20:00:03","slug":"villa-lituania-museo-delle-civilta-rome-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nugu.lt\/?p=1980","title":{"rendered":"Villa Lituania, Museo delle Civilt\u00e0, Rome, 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Villa Lituania\u00a0is an artistic inquiry into unresolved historical debates behind the occupied territory through a series of public interventions, featuring a pigeon race, the development of pavilion architecture in a shape of pigeon loft, and a poetic video archive of traumatic encounters and acts of disobedience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Invited to represent Lithuania in Venice Biennale (in 2007) Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas conceived this work to engage the spatial politics of colonization investigated within an anarchitectural project that is reclaiming diplomacy for the public interest associated with the occupied territory. The project borrows its title from “Villa Lituania” \u2013 the former Lithuanian Embassy in Rome \u2013 generating new discussions about its predicament, the traumatic history of colonization, and the implications they continuously produce for the current socio-political situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The project was prompted by the fact that Lithuania, along with other formerly colonized countries, does not have a presence on the map of turn-of-the-century geopolitics that is the Giardini, the traditional site of the Venice Biennale, where mainly Western countries have had pavilions for national art exhibitions since the biennale started in 1895. Thus Villa Lituania <\/em>was a proposal for a pavilion in flight. As a way to poetically reclaim colonized space, the project connected the absence of national representation in the Giardini with Villa Lituania, which, as a result of the 1939 Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, was given by the Italian fascists to the Soviets in 1940. It remains Lithuania\u2019s last occupied territory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A piece of artistic diplomacy, the Urbonases\u2019s project connected pigeon fanciers in Lithuania, Russia and Italy in an international pigeon race that awarded a Villa Lituania trophy as the prize. After 1,200 pigeons were dispatched from Venice to different countries and regions, the model of the villa was installed as a pigeon loft and adorned with posters, trophy models, and other paraphernalia of the race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After sixteen years of flight the Villa Lituania returns to Rome in 2024 for a launch of the year of diplomacy dedicated to Lozoraitis family. Kazys Lozoraitis, the ambassador in exile, shares his story of civil disobedience and resistance to Soviet occupation in the film featured in Villa Lituania installed in Sala delle Colonne at the Museo delle Civilt\u00e0. Situated in the center of E.U.R., area of Rome developed during fascist era, the Museo delle Civilt\u00e0 is the stage where Villa Lituania engages the audience with the decolonization effort. As Matteo Lucchetti, the exhibition curator says, \u201cThe Villa Lituania installation\u2026 brings witness to the art\u2019s power of diplomacy in mediating complex conflicts and legacies, here, through the creation of an interspecies embassy that offers an artist\u2019s hypothesis of cultural reparation. The exhibition itself embodies the homecoming spirit innate to carrier pigeons, finally bringing the pigeon loft imagined by the artists to Rome, just footsteps from \u201cLa Nuvola\u201d Convention Hall and a few kilometers from where Villa Lituania still stands at Via Nomentana 116.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The project connects architects, municipal bureaucrats, diplomats, fashion designers, and pigeon fanciers to render public discursiveness that is currently divorced from contemporary politics and a sense of commons in general. In this project artists examine the strategies of negotiations between spaces (both private and public), methodologies of reversing already existing perspectives, and tactics for invading the spatial arrangements of the occupied territory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Andrea Viliani, the director of the Museo delle Civilt\u00e0, \u201cIn the installation\u2019s multiple junctures and layers, it takes responsibility for a historical reconstruction that by also welcoming the possibilities inherent in interspecies dialogue between birds and humans transforms the Villa into an entity in movement between nature and culture, a matrix of a renewed freedom that arises from the possibility of inhabiting spaces and times in ways other than those conveyed by official History in order to bring its own version of History to life outside its original (walls) vicissitudes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cVilla Lituania holds high significance not only for Lithuania and its role in the nation\u2019s story but also in the events the world has witnessed in the Russian aggression against Ukraine in February, 2022.\u201d – Daina Lozoraitis<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Villa Lituania <\/em>was commissioned by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania in 2007 for the Lithuanian Pavilion at the 52nd Biennale di Venezia. The project was awarded the jury\u2019s special mention for \u201can insightful and subtly humorous investigation into the notion of the pavilion and the meaning of national identity, engaging the spectator with a compelling narrative.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Villa Lituania was featured at ARCOS museum Italy (2007), MACBA museum Barcelona (2008), MO museum in Vilnius (2019), and published in The Global Work of Art (The University of Chicago Press) and in the Art and Theory of Post-1989 Central and Eastern. Europe: A Critical Anthology (MoMA). It is included in the collection of MO Museum in Lithuania and at FRAC \u2013 Nord-Pas de Calais in Dunkerque.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Villa Lituania, Museo delle Civilt\u00e0, Rome, 2023-2024<\/p>\n\n\n\n

General supervision: Andrea Viliani<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Curator: Matteo Lucchetti<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RUP: Gaia Delpino<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Layout design: Jonas \u017dukauskas, Dolores Lettieri<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Editorial coordinator: Vittoria Pavesi<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Graphic design: Andrea Pizzalis<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Audio-video consultant: Edoardo Pietrogrande<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Installation: Antanas Gerlikas, Articolarte<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Traslations: Craig Allen<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo: Cristina Crippa, Nomeda Urbonas<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This exhibition has been realized in collaboration with the Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania in Rome, Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania to the Holy See and Sovereign Order of Malta,
Lithuanian Culture Institute, Mo Museum of Modern Art, Vilnius<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Special thanks to: Algirdas Baniulis, Eros Carboni, Liu\u010dija \u010carneckyt\u0117-Jasiulevi\u010dien\u0117, Julija Fomina, Giedrius Ilg\u016bnas, a. a. Gorelov Vladimir Albertovitch, Giedr\u0117 Jankevi\u010di\u016bt\u0117, Saulius Kubilius, K\u0119stutis Kuizinas, a. a. Kazys Lozoraitis, Lithuanian Pigeon Sports Federation, Sondra Litvaityt\u0117, Petras Maz\u016bras, Gediminas Meili\u016bnas, Vytautas Narbutas, NODE Berlin Oslo, Simon Rees, Gail\u0117 Pranck\u016bnait\u0117, Julija Reklait\u0117, Vytautas Sabaliauskas, Gediminas Sto\u0161kus, Sandra Straukait\u0117, Saulius \u0160virmickas, Dalius \u017di\u017eys<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Archival material from: Kazys Lozoraitis family archive, Lithuanian Central State Archives, Lithuanian National Radio and Television Archive<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Villa Lituania, 2023 Brochure .pdf<\/a>
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\nhttps:\/\/www.museodellecivilta.it\/events\/nomedagediminasurbonas_villalituania\/?occurrence=2023-12-20\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

an artistic inquiry into unresolved historical debates and cultural diplomacy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1994,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,145],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-projects","category-villa-lituania"],"author_meta":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"https:\/\/nugu.lt\/?author=1"},"featured_img":"https:\/\/nugu.lt\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/IMG_3432-322x242.jpg","coauthors":[],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["projects<\/a>","Villa Lituania<\/a>"],"unlinked":["projects<\/span>","Villa Lituania<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":"0","relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 2 years ago","modified":"Updated 2 weeks ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on December 21, 2023","modified":"Updated on April 18, 2026"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on December 21, 2023 9:18 pm","modified":"Updated on April 18, 2026 8:00 pm"},"featured_img_caption":"Villa Lituania, Museo delle Civilt\u00e0, Rome, 2024","series_order":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nugu.lt\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nugu.lt\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nugu.lt\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nugu.lt\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nugu.lt\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1980"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/nugu.lt\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2681,"href":"https:\/\/nugu.lt\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1980\/revisions\/2681"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nugu.lt\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nugu.lt\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nugu.lt\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nugu.lt\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}