Tris Vonna-Michell, Barbora Šulniūtė, Naubertas Jasinskas, Marge Monko, Mila Panić

24 September 2026 – March 2027

We probably all understand that the ideas and thoughts we come up with do not belong to us alone. We do not so much create thoughts out of nothing as we authentically connect what we have already seen, heard, read, and experienced. In his 1967 essay The Death of the Author, Roland Barthes wrote that a text is a “tissue of quotations”, woven from countless sources of culture. The creative process involves conscious thought, the collective unconscious, bodily experience, intuition, and imagination, while today, through the use of artificial intelligence, we continue to expand this network of immediate connections.

This programme was inspired by a lecture by artist Tris Vonna-Michell at the Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn a year ago. Tris Vonna-Michell is a British artist whose practice brings together storytelling, memory, archival images, and personal histories. During the lecture in Tallinn, the artist spoke about inheriting numerous boxes filled with various creative materials after his father’s death. This was how he discovered that his father had previously been an artist, producing publications and textual works. Although Tris Vonna-Michell had known nothing about this before and had never discussed it with his father, certain aesthetic similarities can be traced between their practices – and, even more strikingly, a similar way of thinking.

This story – whether true or possibly invented by the artist himself – prompted me to think about how ways of thinking can be passed from one generation to another: through family ties, but also through artistic practices. Naturally, behavioural patterns and worldviews are passed on to us by those close to us, our parents, for example, and we pass them on to our children. (And yet, the thought that we potentially pass on everything – whether we want to or not – is both surprising and unsettling.) But close creative relationships can equally have a profound influence on individual artistic practices. The artists participating in the programme are therefore invited to reflect on the processes that have shaped them as creators, and on how their artistic kinships have developed.

The l i n e a g e programme will present works in a variety of formats – installations in the Rupert window, talks, performances, and video screenings.

From 24 September to 18 October, the Rupert window will host an installation by set designer and emerging sculptor Barbora Šulniūtė, Yesterday the Sun Was Watching Us. The work was inspired by observing changes in space-time and light – transitions from day to night, from summer to autumn, from short sleeves to leather coats. The artist is interested in the movement of celestial bodies, the human gaze towards the sky, and the possibility of looking at oneself from a broader, cosmic perspective that becomes accessible when we step back.

On 8 October, artist Tris Vonna-Michell will give a performative lecture about the archival and collaborative practice of his late father, E. E. Vonna-Michell, focusing on his work with sound poet Henri Chopin. The talk will be accompanied by a screening of To Ray the Rays (1985), a 16mm film co-created by E. E. Vonna-Michell and Henri Chopin, bringing together Vonna-Michell’s visual compositions and Chopin’s experimental sound poetry. It offers a rare opportunity to encounter a work in which light, sound, film, and experimental publishing practices converge.

On 20 October, the Rupert window will host Naubertas Jasinskas’s durational performance Something Happened to Me Yesterday , which turns towards the ways of thinking and gestures we unconsciously inherit. These mechanisms are explored through the ideas of Carl Gustav Jung, who regarded longing as a true path towards the self, inseparable from the fear of loneliness and failure.

On 15 December, we will present a photographic installation by Estonian artist Marge Monko in the Rupert window, while Bosnian artist Mila Panić, who lives and works in Berlin, will perform a stand-up performance.

Curated by Monika Lipšic.

The project is supported by the Vilnius City Municipality, Nordic Culture Point, and the Lithuanian Council for Culture. Rupert partner: INVL Family Office.