SIMONYTE, Dovilė
Queen of Wands

“You ought to bow a little before you enter the house. Upon entry we are greeted by a smell of dried plums, sour and seeped by smoke. While our eyes are adjusting to the darkness we might not notice an old cane standing in its own corner, all bent from the senescence of its owner. We turn left, here in the kitchen … The only decorative piece in here is a carved shelf barely hanging from the wall, it houses a row of wooden goblets gleaming from greasy lips and fingers. Almost every second one of them holds a hollow egg. On each egg, as if painted in a thick watercolour, there are depictions of plants, animals and people, who tell their stories in a small handwriting. Perhaps these eggs had a sentimental meaning for their owner, so their relatives could not decide whether they should keep them or throw them away.”

Queen of Wands is a collection of stories and drawings by artist Dovilė Šimonytė. In the summer of 2020, Šimonytė was invited to contribute work to Timemaker, an exhibition at Pamarys Gallery in Juodkrantė (Lithuania), curated by Marija Repšytė and Žilvinas Landzbergas. The exhibition combined folk art objects from Lithuania National Museum of Art and contemporary artists' works. For the exhibition, Šimonytė created a card deck named Queen of Wands. The narratives are based on exhibited pieces and interpretations of random-drawn Tarot cards. [publisher's note]

Published by 12:15, 2022
Multiples & Ephemera