Biography
Svajonė (born in 1961, Vilnius) and Paulius Stanikas (born in 1962, Vilnius) are two Lithuanian artists working as a couple since their student times. Even though both Stanikas live and work in Paris, they introduce their works not only in Europe but also in the United States of America and various countries in Asia. Their relationship with Lithuania is also not over: in 2003 the couple was awarded State Prize of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania, in the same year they represented Lithuania at the Venice biennale. in 2017 Stanikas received the Lithuanian National Culture and Art Prize. Their creative work has also been appraised with other awards: in 2005 the Delfina Prize (London) and the Artslink Prize (New York). Today their works are preserved in the collections of the Lithuanian Museum of Art, the Lithuanian Applied Arts Museum and museums and private collections abroad.
Style
SetP Stanikas’ creative portfolio is very colourful. At the beginning of their collaboration they made sculptures which later they started combining with large scale drawings, photographs and video films. Using different mediums, the couple is trying to shock the viewer as much as possible, analysing scandalous, controversial and fairly improper themes. According to the authors themselves: “Culture needs shock, needs death.” Analysing the surrounding world, differently touching on painful questions of society, immorality, clichés, their work becomes almost coded in the language of interpretations and associations, deconstructing which, the viewer is even more psychologically affected. Often found erotic motifs become allegories of self-destruction, war and death (“La 8ème guerre”, 2013), and the especially plastic body language reveals the psychological portrait of the depicted character, the inner dramatics (“The Last day of Queen”. Diptych, 2012). To sum up, the work of this artist couple is an uncompromised naked look at the crucial questions of humanity, man, his body and his soul.
