dovydas laurinaitis

Dovydas Laurinaitis (b. 1996, Kaunas) is a Vilnius-based transdisciplinary artist, facilitator and writer working mainly with text and performance. With a background in theatre (East 15 Acting School) and performance studies (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama), they have showcased their work internationally at literary festivals, performance art festivals and exhibitions, as well as in digital and public spaces. Their writing has been published in 3:AM Magazine, Versopolis Review, AYoungerTheatre, Litro Magazine, Echo Gone Wrong and Artnews, and they were nominated for the 2024 Visual Art Criticism Awards in Vilnius.

Laurinaitis’ artistic practice centres on the realm of memories, and themes of shame, identity and belonging. Initially tapping into performance as a healing medium, they collapse the private into the public, utilising their personal memories as material, fictionalising and transforming them into something beautiful and sometimes camp, all the while establishing their experiences to be part of a collective continuum shaped by socio-political circumstances. Their performances are invitations for tenderness, sincerity and connection.

Later in their practice, their research veered deeper into collective memory, as a political tool used to prioritise certain narratives about groups of people and establish parts of their identities as essential and unquestionable. Usually in the scope of a nation-state, they have run workshops at Kaunas Artists’ House, Ugly Duck in London and as part of a week-long residency programme for young artists from across Europe in Budapest, on the topic of ‘guerilla commemoration’, as a way to regain agency in the process of constructing collective memory, based on the notion that people are the building blocks of the spaces they inhabit.

This research ties in with Laurinaitis’ ongoing deconstruction of ‘liveness’ within performance and their artistic works often blur the line between the act and the document, questioning how the record can become the source, or reading can become the experience of writing.