WE BELONG TOGETHER

We Belong Together is the outcome of an artistic research process developed at the Vilnius Academy of Arts.

The project transforms part of an institutional space into a warm, pink environment, using colour and textile as forms of spatial reclamation and creating an alternative to the supposed neutrality of the white cube.

At the centre of the project lies a question: do we truly belong together?

The installation explores the difficulty of translating individual subjectivity into something understandable to others, and the constant negotiation involved in existing as part of a collective body.

Belonging is therefore approached not as a stable condition, but as a relational process shaped by communication, perception, social expectations, and cultural boundaries.

Rooted in autobiographical experience, the project addresses neurodivergence, queer identity, migration, and invisible disability.

It focuses on the tension between the need to be recognised and understood and the risk of being reduced to the labels through which society makes certain identities legible.

This tension emerges in Clinical Case, a double textile carpet referring to the processes of medical and social classification experienced by neurodivergent people.

When It’s Sunny Outside and You Have a Neurological Disability (2024) reflects instead on the difficulty of translating an internal cognitive experience without being judged, misunderstood, or reduced to disability.

Throughout the installation, boundaries function as both physical and conceptual conditions, continuously renegotiated between the individual and their environment.

Soft pink fabrics form a fragile, liminal architecture that appears welcoming and protective while remaining deliberately unstable.

We Belong Together ultimately reflects on the paradox of collective life: we cannot exist entirely outside relationships with others, yet belonging continuously requires us to negotiate our identities, differences, and ways of communicating.

The project considers how different forms of existence might inhabit a shared space without being forced into sameness.