Ona Museum

The login page on the Ona Museum Official website.

The installation of the project Ona:Internal project(ions) at the VDA Titanikas Gallery in Vilnius, 2019.

Dear reader,

As I am an artist, I guess it’s not my job to present myself. That’s why curators are doing that job for us. Anyway, my curator asked me to write a prolog. She said, „write whatever you want, but I think you should put some personal touch to it“. As I owe her for presenting me, I decided to extend my thoughts in these paragraphs.

The process of the idea was long and rather tortuous. It all started with my personal grudge over the art world today. If you asked me what produced it, I wouldn’t be able to specify the exact thing. It was just overall disappointment in everything that art represented. It was mostly overloaded content, mediums, a history where everything started to become a recycled object. Nothing was original anymore, everything pointed out on something else, and everything that felt like an original idea soon became something that was made years back. My system was overbooked. So I wanted to propose a new beginning, as well for myself and my fellow artists. To do that I had to install a new system upon which I would operate. It was only later when the idea evolved into something rather peculiar.

I started with naive and ambitious enthusiasm in creating a new persona through which I would channel my thoughts and creations on what artist can say today. Looking back, the original idea was good. Creating relational objects and artworks by the new anonymous artist. Trying to solve or at least point out to the problem of fractioned identities we possess. It was only later when I discovered that Nicolas Bourriaud had a similar idea about the modernity of the present. One could tell it was the other way around, but this project is about the truth, so there is no point for me starting to say otherwise. After all, I would only fool myself, since your opinion is already constructed and there is nothing I can do about it. Nevertheless, the focus is to point out that there is a problem. What is the modernity of today? Even though Bourriaud took a different turn, I wanted to explore the new chapter which is: who is executing that modernity? At that point, everything changed. I realized that going one year into the development of the project led me to the final conclusion why I even chose to do it in the first place.

So to paraphrase the idea of the project, yes, it started with creating a persona through which I would channel my thoughts. But in the end, my focus became not only to channel it but rather finding that new author of today. Coming to that, it is important to clarify that today’s identities, personas, authorships, became something completely different than what it was before. I would dare to say that shaping identity is less in our power than it was in the past. We encounter multiple possibilities to operate or act which are bound with manipulation of social networks and opportunities that the internet provides us. Even though it is possible without, but mainly not in our power to do so, each activity that requires a network, creates a certain fraction. The fraction that is operating without our knowledge, but with our consent. So to figure out who we are today and where we are headed, it was necessary to put the whole idea of the project into this new context.

For me to include this new method, method of analyzing fractions, I created a few new personas or fractions and observed them while they develop. As I am here merely to explain what the original idea was, my curator will go into more details about the results of my methods. Long story short, I started with the need to become someone I thought I needed to be to overcome anxiety, doubt, and collapse in personality. But by implementing this new method, it led me to become my own “anonymous panopticon” and therefore temporarily solve the issue.

Is it art though? I am not so sure anymore. Does it have to be? Maybe, still uncertain, guess the recipient will decide it. In any case, the idea is here for implementation, not by all of you, but for the ones who are going to be recognized by it. I guess it can be a holistic experience in which “one” might find the answers by implementing the method in their sphere of doubts.

As a result, I concluded that not only the authenticity of the author is dead, but possibly, art overall, along with society. Following the thoughts, hereby I announce that I am retiring from the art world as it was.

Sincerely yours,

Ona