Hearings

2023. 7-channel video installation. Colour, sound, 7 perspex screens each 204 x 43 cm

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"Neringa Naujokaite's work is a fascinating examination of personal histories and fates in a society that, due to its diverse composition of migrant people or people from marginalised groups, has problems with adequate participation. In her multimedia installations and video projections, she gives a voice with great sobriety, precision and persuasiveness to people who would not be heard without her. With her clear language, she creates memorable images and narratives which touch the viewer emotionally and preserve the dignity of her protagonists." CityARTist Prize Jury, 2024

My Valley of Draughts

2025. HD video. Colour, sound. 9:52 min

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A journey into the past with interwoven memories of two people who, as a child, lost their homeland and their idyllic home by the river in the turmoil of history. Childhood nostalgia mingles with legends about the forest dwellers, the longing for the distant Lithuania and the deeply personal family trauma in which an entire family was torn apart and deported to Siberia.

Grey Zone

2020/2021. Cycle of 12 photographs. C-print, Diasec, 67,5 x 120 cm

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"Neringa Naujokaite's work combines in a very unique way aesthetic urgency with social responsibility. In her photographic works from the most recent Grey Zone series (since 2020), she often focuses on barriers, grids, boundaries or barriers that could turn people away or mark insurmountable divisions. In these works, the oscillation between rigorously reduced form and subtle social indictment becomes particularly clear." CityARTist Prize Jury, 2024

"While the camera is pointed upwards in Black White Grey, in the current photo series Grey Zone (2020) it is positioned diagonally from the side or frontally opposite. Temporary refugee centres, photographed in Dusseldorf, can be seen behind the grids and bars of fences and gates. The details are tightly framed, the buildings behind the barriers recede into the distance and appear anonymous and unreal, even unimaginable. In some cases the grids are blurred and the buildings clearly defined, in others the relationship is reversed. People appear only rarely. And even if the entrance and exit to the camps is open and the refugees can move around freely, isolation is visualised here, a feeling of being excluded and marginalised, especially as the fences actually serve to protect the accommodation from outside access. The statements in Neringa Naujokaite's works are subtle and clear. They are aimed at identification and participation in a barely comprehensible present." Thomas Hirsch, biograph (September 2021)

"What you can see here are things we don't know too much about: It is the detention centre for deported asylum seekers in Buren and the housing containers for refugees here in our city. The camera remains outside, the pictures show the buildings from a great distance, individual people are barely visible, physiognomies not at all. At her exhibition in Kunstraum a few years ago, Neringa did the opposite: her video camera precisely captured the face of an African woman and her voice, along with her personal descriptions. And these also described things that we don't know too much about. In the photos of the series Grey Zone_d.p.dusseldorf and Grey Zone_d.p.buren, we see the containers and the walls of the buildings through something: the bars, the fences that mark an inside and an outside, prevent movement and exchange and form a separation. The fences are fixed and focussed by the camera, while the buildings and the interior of the area remain blurred, repellent and distant. The grids, however, also form the rhythm across the surface of the photo. In Neringa's photographs, the grids and fences appear almost like a mesh or a net or even like an optical pause, like gaps analogue to music – if their recorded presence were not so dreadful, it would almost create a musical impression. In fact the grids form a continuous rhythm of the surface. These fences seem like a kind of minimal music or a techno beat. Here, content becomes form and form becomes content. <...> The grids, the interweavings, the nets in the works of Neringa and Brigitte separate and connect. So perhaps this exhibition as a whole has the effect of a skin or a membrane. Of course, the grid or the net or the interweaving is a metaphor for all of us – our separating and our connecting. They show a feature of our nature: we are social beings – and sometimes not. That's why this art concerns us so much." Markus Kottmann, exhibition opening speech at the SITTart Galerie in Dusseldorf (2023)

Art Deco

2018. 6-channel slide and video installation. 243 black and white slides, around 60 min HD video, silent

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"The Art Deco project investigates contemporary Lithuanian society’s views of its architectural heritage, which is increasingly threatened by neglect and demolition." Verlag Kettler, 2021

"All three dimensions of time are made clear: the past is seen from the original space and the details, the present is revealed through the parallel display of fragments of the flat owner's correspondence with institutions, neighbours and craftsmen, and the future is foreshadowed like a vision that however does not shine in idealised pink, but rather takes the form of a ‘problem piece’ and is therefore not easy to predict. <...> The installation creates the experience of a real visit, so that in our dreams this space becomes our own. The aesthetic pleasure created by the curved art deco lines, the harmony of restraint and luxury, the promise of a comfortable and interesting life and the minimalism of an empty space are just some of the fascinating things." Monika Krikštopaitytė, in Neringa Naujokaite: Art Deco (Dortmund: Verlag Kettler, 2021)

Golzheim

2022. HD video. Black and white, sound. 19:00 min

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"The video Golzheim conveys the socially controversial atmosphere of one neighborhood in the north of Düsseldorf. The different architectural structures – the monumental Nordpark (North Park) established by National Socialists, the „white settlement“ Golzheimer-Siedlung with its high-priced private houses for the upper classes, the Jewish elderly home and the temporary refugee camp made of containers – are all located side by side on a single axis along the Rhine in the north of Düsseldorf. The contrasts live side by side. The connecting link is Nordpark, where all the inhabitants of this neighborhood, who live next door yet in different worlds, meet one another. Golzheim seeks to reflect on the socio-political and architectural changes in this part of the city and deals with the question, under which circumstances the urban cityscape is created, changes and is perceived." LOOP Fair Barcelona, 2022

Last Day

2024. 10 Photographs. Black and white, pigment print, 27 x 40,5 cm

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Other Sight

2013. 5-channel video installation

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“In her project Other Sight, Neringa Naujokaite focuses on a phenomenon conspicuous in her homeland Lithuania since several years: the re-emigration. Amazingly lots of Lithuanians emigrated in Western countries for a better fortune, yet turned back. The artist interviewed these repatriates, questioning their experiences, feelings and emotional relations abroad and at home, chances and problems of communication and economic survival. As video installation, she combines the interviews with a camera travelling through the streets of Vilnius. As an artist’s book, she combines photographic stills of the travelling with fragments and sequences of the interviews. In both versions, the artist herself remains in the background, letting the re-émigrés telling their stories, and in both versions a specific silence is prevalent. <...> Out of the relations between location, actors and viewers Neringa Naujokaite always develops multilayered deployments, constructing fragile situations that baffle any retreating to a voyeuristic distance and rather involve the audience in sensitive questions. <...> The black and white of the videos and the photographic stills transfer a melancholic shading of a meditative reflection of distance. We are confronted with a double vanishing: that of the Old World, and immediately that of the contemporary world to who’s colour saturated lies of representation we hardly can establish sincere emotional relations. Thus, any audience of the Western world possibly might detect an astonishing ability of mirroring the alien and the intimate, the present and the past, driven by the desire to reflect their love for the native land in a longing for its better future – an ability that seems often to slip from the recognition of economically more advanced societies.“ Ursula Panhans-Bühler, in Neringa Naujokaite: Other Sight (Dortmund: Verlag Kettler, 2013)

"The motif of eternal return <...> is also present in other works by Neringa Naujokaite. Since Homer's wanderings, the journey and the return, as the greatest and above all inner events, have taken millions of faces and have become many stories. The artist's generation can be described as the first generation of young people who, after the fall of the Iron Curtain of the Soviet era, were able to go to live and work abroad. And at that time, Abroad was a word with a capital letter, intoxicating in its colours and possibilities, seductive as a completely different quality and therefore idealised. Many people left, many were disappointed and returned, others adapted or were ashamed to return empty-handed, some of them not only adapted, but also made a name for themselves. So far, this is a relatively unreflected, painful and in its own way valuable series of experiences, which became the subject of Naujokaite's video work Other Sight (2012). The dissonance between inner feeling, self-understanding, expectation and the environment (one's own or someone else's, or even both), the action, can be found in many of the works of this artist. Ambivalence becomes a way of telling the viewer about in-between states, fragmented identities, cultural intersections." Monika Krikštopaitytė, in Neringa Naujokaite: Art Deco (Dortmund: Verlag Kettler, 2021)

"This part of the publicacion is dedicated to contemporary creators in the open world. There is no ambition to give a broad picture, rather an attemt to trace, in dashed lines, careers of three female artists currently working from Germany. The most prominent quality shared by the artists is their voyage from analogous, two-dimensional medium, to 3-D and spacial solutions. All three were born in Lithuania, but left for Germany due to personal circumstance, seeking art studies abroad and attracted by the international art centers. Their artworks are expansive, breaking out from the frames and occupying the halls. <...> Six-channel-video-installation by Neringa Naujokaite Another look [Other Sight] strikes as being ascetic, linear and even geometrical. She lays bare the social phenomenon of re-emigration, and allows individual stories and personal drama to unfold. 'How did migration affect the life of repatriates? What are the reasons of their emigration and repatriation? How can families and individuals reintegrate into society? Are they used to the existing social structures, family or gender roles; or, perhaps, they isolate or irritate them?' These are just a handful of questions she posed to returning Lithuanians. Neringa Naujokaite opted for video art following her graphic art studies at Vilnius Academy of Arts, visual art studies at Düsseldorf Art Academy and Media Art Academy in Köln. Her recent photo and video works reflect documentary character of her art and her perception of people in social and urban environment. <...> We, the curious spectators, are the Others, who receive the result. That is why we invite to experience, get absorbed by this art and learn. Not only the artwork as the result of the work of these individuals, but also human narratives of these female artists, the threads of which connect Lithuania and Germany, Vilnius and Berlin or Düsseldorf, and Frankfurt. The narratives that can any time take to other geography, the hearts of people in other cuontries, and other welcoming art institutions." Birutė Pankūnaitė, in Equation with Unknows. Lithuanian Artists in Germany from 1945 till Now (Vilnius: The Lithuanian National Museum of Art, 2023)

un altro ...

di vento, di cielo

2015. HD video. Black and white, sound. 7:45 min

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"The video footage of the architecture intersecting with the landscape seems like a sequence of black-and-white stills merging rhythmically into one another. Neringa Naujokaite combines the views of the Insel Hombroich Museum near Neuss with a recording of a Polish choir accompanied by electronic sounds." in Katalog der 62. Internationalen Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen (Oberhausen: Karl Maria Laufen, 2016)

“The more traditional concerts are not shunned, but they too have a white screen. <...> With un altro ... di vento, di cielo, Poland's Joanna Wozny favours static textures, focusing on notes that become the epicentre of minute shifts in the terrain. Beyond the elliptical wording of the title – whose words are borrowed from Pavese – the composer owes a debt to Luigi Nono for these false stases, vibrant beneath their surface. Despite this overt influence, the composer displays an undeniable personality and, thanks to sophisticated electronics, deftly plays on the equivocal nature of spatial perception, as does Neringa Naujokaite's short film, screened simultaneously, with a highly architectural approach.“ Pierre Rigaudière, Diapason (27 May 2015)

Black White Grey

2018. 10 photographs. Black and white, pigment print, 20 x 30 cm

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“The series Schwarz Weiß Grau is characterized by a similar calm, in which Neringa Naujokaite focuses on the interior design of an apartment in Kaunas. With her camera, the artist observed the renovation of an old apartment from the 1930s, during which historical Art Deco elements were exposed and received a new appreciation. In fine gradations the close-up images highlight the historical and aesthetic value equally. Kaunas, the birthplace of Neringa Naujokaite, draws the photographer and video artist back again and again. She traces the footsteps of this city, which was the seat of government of Lithuania from 1920 to 1940. During this period of regained national independence, the temporary capital flourished, which manifested itself in various construction projects influenced by Art Deco and Modernism.” Anne Rodler, in The Dream of Living (Dortmund: Verlag Kettler, 2021)

"She [Naujokaite] takes a different approach in the photographic series Black White Grey (2018), which uses black and white images to look upwards in an interior, to the lintel, its coffers and the ceiling above, thus defining the layout of the rooms and their character as passageways and places of residence in a reduced manner. With each photograph, the viewer visualises a little more of the structures of a dwelling that at first seems to reveal hardly anything about itself and yet is so clear, with precise cuts. The geometric order is supported by the light, which emphasises the lines. In fact, Black White Grey shows a restored old flat from the 1930s in Kaunas at eye level. The process of restoring the listed flat itself is the subject of the preceding video and slide installation Art Deco, each consisting of three channels, which was presented in Kaunas in 2018. It questions how the city deals with its cultural memory. Neringa Naujokaite works out the aesthetics of architectural structures that oscillate between functionality and ornamentation." Thomas Hirsch, biograph (September 2021)

Raster

2006. 2-channel video installation. Object of wood and perspex 98 x 140 x 65 cm

"Naujokaite is a master of installation construction. Her great strength is her ability to develop her works from the viewer's perspective. She is always on the same level as us; we are never lectured to or merely sprinkled on. Semantic associations with ‘Rasterfahndung’ build up an expectation that seems to be realised in the text. It soon becomes clear that on the one hand a criminal describes his fantasies of hunting children and on the other reflects on him from an evaluative distance. What is true here, what is real? Because several levels are shown, no predetermined, manipulative or congruent picture emerges. Between black and white, we viewers first have to search for the actual image – and realise (unfortunately, it has to be said) our need for manipulation or at least our ability to accept manipulated media statements, not wanting to know exactly what is going on. Because that is of course much easier than having to deal with contradictions and counterpoints." Daniel Neugebauer, in Neringa Naujokaite – Between the Lines (Gütersloh: Kunstverein Kreis Gütersloh e. V., 2009)

Horizon

2010. HD video. Colour, sound. 08:16 min

"As in the Romantic era, Naujokaite's videos are less concerned with the factuality of the recordings than with their imaginative character. The images seem to express an ungraspable infinity in their unrememberable sequence, a monumentality in which dream and reality merge inseparably into one another through the movement of appearance and disappearance; this may also be a reason for the high emotionality of Naujokaite's images mentioned above. In any case, at the level of the medium, this type of video art is closely linked to the content of the films shown: migration, re-migration, the constant movement of the globalised individual.“ Bernhard Stumpfhaus, exhibition opening speech at the Städtische Galerie Tuttlingen, 2014

"A young Asian girl stands on the roof of a house and gazes into the distance, over buildings, factories and electricity pylons and out to the horizon. The protagonist in Neringa Naujokaite's video installation, Horizon, has a fondness for her space above the rooftops, where the surface is made of overlapping broken concretes labs. This is where she comes to take a break from her office job, retreating to a space insulated from everyday life, a space with a wide view, fresh air and no cares whatsoever. As the images of the buildings in need of renovation their façades criss-crossed by power cables, show, it is not so much the beauty of the visible objects as the atmosphere on the deserted roof that permits such a change in the sense of physical well-being and the feeling of space. The ground-level projection offers the viewer an opportunity to share in the sense of space of the musician portrayed in the video." Sarah Kristin Happersberger, in Marler Medienkunst-Preise: Sound | Video International Competition 2013/2014 (Marl: Wienand, 2014)

"An insight into the concepts of Neringa Naujokaite is currently being provided by the thematic exhibition The Dream of Living at the Museum Ratingen. The video Horizon (2010, 8 min) can be seen on a large screen in the museum's project room. It presents a young woman on a terrace in the Chinese megacity of Chongqing, surrounded by high-rise buildings and with a view into the distance and of the two rivers far below, and above it all lies the smog. The woman, who lives in a cramped flat in one of the tower blocks, describes her passion for music and her desires for self-realisation. The background noise of the city is gradually overlaid by electronic sound collages, accompanied by lines of text. The subject of Horizon is the expectations and hopes, especially of the young generation, in the big city and the role of architecture in this, whose functionalism goes beyond any individualism; Neringa Naujokaite recorded the sequences of the video on location during a scholarship she received for the Chinese city from Kulturamt Düsseldorf." Thomas Hirsch, biograph (September 2021)

Grand Hotel

2007. 12 photographs. C-print, 60 x 90 cm

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"A festively dressed transvestite in a skintight golden dress strides through the devastated rooms of a house whose former splendour can only be guessed at from the high ceilings, the large windows and the wallpaper. The still remaining furniture of the rooms and the many remnants reveal that the house is a hotel that has suffered a continuous decline over the decades to complete decay. <...> Michel Foucault includes the hotel in his list of heterotopias, or other places. By heterotopias, he means utopias that have actually been realised – transitory places that are both inside and outside society. They are spaces with a variety of connotations onto which fantasies, desires and also fears can be projected and interpreted. The hotel thus presents itself as an oasis of relaxation, as a place of pleasure and recreation, but also as a place of criminal machinations and, last but not least, as a sinister place. These impressions are heightened when the heterotopic location has been abandoned and can only be experienced as a ruin. In addition to the projections, there is also the dimension of (fantasised) memory: What was it once like here? What stories took place here? The hotel and the ruin form a double place of imagination: the hotel and the ruin form illusionary spaces that are accumulated together in the one room." Rainer Hoffmann, 2008

"The room. The woman. Of course it's her that your wandering gaze falls on first. She doesn't give you hers. The shiny gold evening dress that hugs her hips. The black feather boa that has slipped over her shoulders and now hugs her waist: Your eyes are allowed to touch all of this without being stopped. She stands turned away, bent forwards, her hands in long black gloves resting on the window sill. Only later will you realise that it is sealed with a metal screen. The woman. The room. Your gaze. Caught by the twilight that spreads across the room. Which seems to tell of the splendour of times gone by like her dress. The flounces of the curtains, tired and dusty, graze the floor, where no carpet covers the nakedness of the scraped parquet. The wallpaper whose patterns have long since faded. The armchairs, on whose torn upholstery no one will take a seat. The woman. The room. Your gaze, which is averted, furtively touching her body like things. Do you know that you will have to pay for this? Even as you look, the picture disintegrates. What seemed glamour becomes stale and cheap like the furniture, the wallpaper, the dress, the blonde of her hair has always been. The room. The woman. They didn't find each other. They have always belonged to each other. The room that isn't a room. The woman who is not a woman. They never existed. The hotel that isn't a hotel. You are its only guest. It was built just for you." Verena Kuni, in Balmoral 2007/2008: Balmoral Blend (Berlin: Argobooks, 2008)

Yellow

2010. 18 photographs. C-print, 54,5 x 83 cm

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"Neringa Naujokaite's work is a fascinating examination of personal histories and fates in a society that, due to its diverse composition of migrant people or people from marginalised groups, has problems with adequate participation. In her multimedia installations and video projections, she gives a voice with great sobriety, precision and persuasiveness to people who would not be heard without her. With her clear language, she creates memorable images and narratives which touch the viewer emotionally and preserve the dignity of her protagonists." CityARTist Prize Jury, 2024

Chongqing

2010. 11 photographs. C-print, Diasec, 54,5 x 83 cm

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"As diverse as the photo series, video works and video installations that Neringa Naujokaite has created since the 1990s are, they all focus on the state of the individual in our society. They focus on the places where people live and work and refer to the urban environment and social contacts. Depending on the narrative and context, Naujokaite shifts in her works from the immediate proximity to an overview perspective: her photographs are characterised by a respectful approach to individual stories and collective circumstances, combined with attentive observation. <...> A series of colour photographs was also taken in Chongqing, showing single views of the city, its cheap, quickly built dwellings and the workers on construction sites early in the morning in the foggy smog, so that a touch of the romantic, in which the colourfulness is reduced, lies over the harsh reality of bitter everyday life." Thomas Hirsch, biograph (September 2021)

"Neringa Naujokaite’s photographs show views of Chongqing, today one of the world’s largest cities with a population of 34 million. This Chinese megacity has expanded rapidly in the last few decades and is constantly changing. Its increasing economic power facilitated a construction boom as well as a rural and work exodus. Added to this were the changes brought about by the construction of the dam to the north, which significantly expanded the infrastructure of the entire region. Chongqing extends along the mouth of the Jialing and Yangtze rivers and over the adjacent mountain slopes. The metropolis often disappears under the haze typical for its location, and Neringa Naujokaite captures an atmosphere in which the city seems far away and inaccessible." Anne Rodler, in The Dream of Living (Dortmund: Verlag Kettler, 2021)

Untitled (Stencils)

2007. Series of 12 photographs. C-print, 48 x 72 cm

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"Stripes. Black and white. They fill the picture, fragment the view. It finds no hold – just where you think you can grasp something with your hands: A grid. The stripes are already more than just patterns, the picture becomes a space. Or it is from the start. Because there is a person leaning against a wall. And behind the bars. Behind bars? The person's clothing is indeed striped, black and white like the bars themselves. As we know from historical prisoners' uniforms, which are intended to mark their wearers and expose them to view. Here, however, things are different. The room behind the bars could be a cage. And this impression is reinforced when the person begins to move. She moves up and down like a caged predator. But she is not trapped. Hardly that the gaze could hold her: Stripes on stripes, black on black, white on white, the pattern becomes camouflage. As the bars move forwards, backwards and against each other, the entire grid starts to move. And with it the space, the image, the view. And then she is gone. A blink of an eye later: back again. Gone! There! Gone! There! A piece of cake? Away! There! A feint? Away! There! A dance? All of this and none of that. A choreography of measured movements: Of body and image, surface and colour. Gaze after gaze. Added to this is sound, which seems to give the body the beat, although it actually follows the beat of the body. Black on white or white on black: who wants to decide? Look closely? That just means playing along. While it – Away! There! – is the apparent prisoner who directs and commands the gaze: Follow me. If you can. Behind the grid, which at the same moment turns back into stripes, black and white, into a surface. It is our gaze that is trapped here. And we remain on the outside." Verena Kuni, in Balmoral 2007/2008: Balmoral Blend (Berlin: Argobooks, 2008)

"The photo series Untitled (Stencils) could be seen as stills from the film. In reality, it is an autonomous work produced with a digital camera, as indicated by the image format (h. 48cm x w. 72cm). The picture has to make do without sound. The only means of expression lies in the proportions of the figure, the close-up or distant view and its positioning in the pictorial space. It is interesting that Neringa Naujokaite takes up the theme of adaptation again with the photo series Untitled (Stencils) and translates it into a different medium, which introduces a nuance not only in the title but also in the interpretation. The prevalent feature in both works is the dominant grid pattern, which keeps the figure in bounds, so to speak, and limits its freedom. The figure's efforts to conform seem to be signalled by the fact that her clothing merges with the grid. Formal adaptation becomes a symbol of social adaptation – for example that of the foreigner to the customs of the host country or simply that of the employee to the duties of his employer. Read in this way, the cycle becomes a symbol of the behaviour of the individuals in the society in which they live. While the video presents the active organisation of one's own life in a given situation, which is particularly expressed by the figure's response to the rhythm of the music, the photo series places more emphasis on the schematic. The photographs lack the pulsating life of the music and the changing rhythm that enable development. Accordingly, the figure's behaviour appears passive, acquiescent and prudent. This is also indicated by the turning away from the viewer in two of the five photographs and the static pose." Danièle Perrier, in Bilder machen Leute: Die Inszenierung des Menschen in der Fotografie (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2007)

Conversion

2011. HD video. Colour, sound. 11:29 min

"It is remarkable that this longing for the absent – for the foreign, for home – does not actually mean a point of halting. Home or foreign lands are not stops, because the arrival on one side is at the same time the departure to the other, which has just been left in order to reach the one. What remains is being on the move; more precisely: movement is a permanent state. However, the permanent itself appears in Naujokaite's films in the form of the paths on which we move: Rivers, roads, motorways. <...> In this video, the artist shows monumental, towering motorways, bridges, crossroads on which traffic moves back and forth. Of course, given the paradoxical nature of longing described above, it is irrelevant whether the cars are travelling forwards or backwards. Naujokaite shows the motorways recorded without a fixed location, the concrete landscape of mobility spanning nature in a way one can recognise stone-age temples and places of supernatural sublimity in them. In their grandiose monstrosity, despite their inhuman hostility to nature, they too have an irritating character that lends this nightmare landscape of industrial megalomania something like a sacred aura of numinous significance. To summarise, it can be said that Naujokaite uses her video art to offer us transformations rather than documentations. In her sequences, she creates a sphere of absolute, imaginative pictures that speak of people's longing to be on the road, looking for the absent. The artist refers to longing as a motivation for the imagination, for desiring and dreaming. Being on the move is presented as something that remains, whereby the paths of movement themselves appear as monumental dream paths." Bernhard Stumpfhaus, exhibition opening speech at the Städtische Galerie Tuttlingen, 2014

"The artist creates a tension between the past and the present future, and between the monstrous bigness of contemporary cities and the miniaturized scale of the contemporary life. Past and future encounter in a delicate balance and in the same time configure an open question of the relation between that new technological ‘nature’ and the ‘humans’ enduring fragility." Ursula Panhans-Bühler, 2013

Longing

1997. Slide installation / 2003. 11 photographs. C-print, 91 x 125 cm

"Can feelings be seen? Of course not, but by making conclusive identification impossible, seeing can go further – all the way to penetrating recognition. It doesn't stop at looking, but becomes empathy, in which the richness of our memories, associations and sympathies enter the picture. The view of the picture reaches into our own inner world. <...> Because in the slide installation Longing the persons, whom you look at simultaneously and one after the other, come close to you and yet remain unreachable, because these colours are not those of the characters, because they do not appear real, because their thoughts are certainly not the ones we read, and because these texts do not tell us anything either, because these pictures and texts do not close together, but open up – precisely for this reason they draw the viewer into their world. You recognise these strangers more and more, you understand more and more what they are thinking, the colours match more and more with what you are reading." Erich Franz, in Neringa Naujokaite (Lippstadt: Kunstverein Lippstadt e. V., 2005)

"In the installation (Longing, 1997), Naujokaite strives to record a moment in her friends' life. The subject of the work is the most popular subject of art, and in particular of popular music, unquenched longing. Naujokaite pictures the people close to her by the means of gestures in a soft light. An important dimension is the literary background of the work, William Kotzwinkle's novel "The Jewel of the Moon" and the quotations from this work. The documentary nature of the pictures and the close trimming of the body pictures, as well as the treatment of colour nuances which strengthen the atmosphere, takes the spectator's attention further than the persons present in the pictures, to the unsurpassable clinging emotions. In her works Naujokaite leans on the revealing nature of cultural forms. The direct, but at the same time considerate approach to deep human experiences tells us of her own attitude towards life. She rather talks through her works than discusses them in a language which isn´t her own. Through the delicacy of the works the obvious contents are preserved fresh and the adversities of human life retain their mysterious nature. The tapestry of life is embedded in the works already as they are realised. Thus they stand ready to reflect also that world of interpretations which the spectator carries with him.” Leevi Haapala, in Anna-Lea Kopperi, Neringa Naujokaite: Replace | Muutoksia (Rauma: Lönnström Art Museum, 1999) 

Borders

2005. Text and sound installation. Database live projection, 1 computer, 1 video projector, 4 loudspeakers

"A little courage is therefore required to view art, because Neringa Naujokaite's works demand nothing less of us than to take full responsibility for our imagination. Aesthetic responsibility cannot be separated from social responsibility. Responsibility begins in the dream, in the imagination – and those who are not prepared to dream, to indulge and to fantasise are denied a fundamental quality, the fundamental weight of human perception. Aesthetic vision, as Naujokaite's works prove, does not end in the gallery space. Variations of the great leitmotif in Naujokaite's work can be found in all of her works: The open spaces that connect society and the individual, the hidden openings that allow us to see the special in the banal. Naujokaite creates visual laboratories, builds a tense framework on which our eyes begin to climb. Her art is about achieving concrete results in an open experimental situation. The work Borders once again brings together much of what has been described: open linguistic spaces, imageless word shells, the lightness of language, the weight of the image. Speech contributions from radio confession shows have to stand up to a swarm of wild words on the screen. Images only appear there through the animation of the programmed words. The words waver between experience and cliché until finally evocation and imitation overlap. At first, you're just speechless." Daniel Neugebauer, in Neringa Naujokaite – Between the Lines (Gütersloh: Kunstverein Kreis Gütersloh e. V., 2009)

Red

2003. 2-channel video installation. Colour, sound, double projection screen of perspex stripes 200 x 380 x 40 cm

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"In the audio-video installation Red, too, the vertical stripes of the projection surfaces form a grid that prevents simple identification and leads to the co-perception of processes that are not immediately recognisable, but only reveal themselves ‘between the lines’. The man and the woman are visible simultaneously on staggered stripes and yet remain separate in the streets of a city, crossing each others' paths by chance without meeting. One looks into inaccessibility. The unity of optical perception is broken down into layers of the unconnected. The projections remain barred against each other and combine to form a story that – as in other works by Naujokaite – follows a dramaturgy of the crossword puzzle: Paths that cross without coming together." Erich Franz, in Neringa Naujokaite (Lippstadt: Kunstverein Lippstadt e. V., 2005)

"Her works with new media quickly gain formal complexity. Text – whether in scrolls or in blocks on their own projection surfaces – often plays an important role, and the voice of the protagonists is sometimes added. The projections of the installations often comprise several channels, whereby the projection surfaces can hang on different walls in the room or at an angle to each other and then surround the viewer or invite them to move and thus involve them in the work. Several panels can be hung as high-oblong stripes at an even distance from each other. The process of rasterisation already characterises several of the videos and the photographic series themselves, which, printed as Diasec, follow one another linearly.“ Thomas Hirsch, biograph (September 2021)

"Neringa Naujokaite's most recent video installation Red (2003) also works with the overlapping of images. The artist sets up two rows of stripes 40 cm apart, one behind the other, which are positioned offset to each other so that the two video images, each projected onto one row of stripes, constantly and evenly overlap from the viewer's perspective. The two projections show a man and a woman walking separately through Dublin. However, the viewer's quickly arising expectation that the two might meet is disappointed. Although the two walk across the same square at the end of both films, they do not really pay attention to each other, so that there is no real interpersonal encounter. Both films are bathed in shades of red, which become more intense the closer the two protagonists get to each other within the city and diminish in intensity as the man and woman move geographically apart. As she emphasised in her presentation, Naujokaite chose the colour red because of its symbolism as the colour of love and eroticism, although – or because – these two appear as a lack in her video work. The seemingly aimless and lonely wandering of the two protagonists through the urban and suburban streets draws attention to the human couple as the ‘basic unit’ of both private life and society, as the interface between the individual and the community, the private sphere and the public sphere, whose apparent self-evidence in everyday life only becomes apparent to the viewer through their absence." Astrid Haas, in Das erinnerte Haus (Essen: Museum Folkwang, 2004)

Gravity

2005. Video. Colour, sound. 13:09 min

"Can an artist use and manipulate this attraction of the moving image? Are there thus also pictures with weight and can the weight of a picture be determined? I believe yes. The artist takes up the theme of falling in a playful, almost pleasing way. In Gravity, Neringa Naujokaite takes our gaze into the sky of her native Lithuania. The sky is blue and wide, the space seems endless, and the hovering state of the flying objects she captures manifests the old dream of detachment, weightlessness and ultimately complete autonomy. If the artist didn't immediately use our visual relaxation to slowly squeeze out the air we have just gained, our hearts would immediately open. The picture moves on, time as the dark element of the motion instantly turns the one floating into one falling. In order to make something impossible possible, as we experience directly in these images, man goes to great lengths. We want to escape time – but without time, without falling, without weight, there is no feeling of beauty, because beauty is fleeting. That is a paradox.
The awareness of this paradox is reflected in Naujokaite's work on a language level. The text that flies through the picture and, above all, the spoken reports of experience bring us back to the here and now. The primal dream of flying must confront the primal reality – shackles, grounding or here very specifically: mobbing. The words become contrapuntal elements to the freedom of the image. In this way, the work also becomes relevant to everyday life. Naujokaite examines the space of work as an elementary space. As a model that inspires us to liberation, to self-realisation, that challenges us and drives us forward. But she does not conceal the fall. The fine line between self-realisation and self-abandonment becomes tangible. The aesthetic product Gravity is experienced as being just as contradictory and full of tension as real life, just as important and weighty. Ultimately, this also shows how art goes beyond the framework of political discussion by leaving contradictions as they are without becoming arbitrary. Naujokaite makes it clear in every work that her art is not self-sufficient, but must be suitable as a formula for everyday experience." Daniel Neugebauer, in Neringa Naujokaite – Between the Lines (Gütersloh: Kunstverein Kreis Gütersloh e. V., 2009)

Insert Name

2001. 2-channel video installation. Colour, sound, Leporello-like object of perspex 203 x 354 x 20 cm

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"The use of the screen is refined – a threshold which separates but is also the instrument of connection – the most interesting element in "Name einfugen", an installation by Neringa Naujokaite which consists of video images of a white and a black woman with a perfectly synchronized soundtrack, projected on different portions of the same screen set up as a kind of tent folded in parts. Observing the video from one perspective the white woman is seen to be speaking, from another point of view it is instead the black woman saying the same things." Stefania Garassini, SHIFT (2002.10.29)

"In her video installation Insert Name (2001), Neringa Naujokaite projected two videos onto a wall of vertical lamella, arranged zigzagging at right angles to each other like a Leporello. On the lamella facing one side, the artist showed video footage of an African woman that she had filmed in a deportation prison in Neuss. The woman talked about her everyday life in detention, her hopes and fears. The serious tone of her account was broken by individual humorous moments, but always remained subliminal – even comical situations did not alter the narrator's fundamental, hopeless situation. <...> When the exhibition visitors changed their position in front of the screen, the images of the African woman merged with those of the second video projection until finally only the latter could be seen. Naujokaite projected a video tape onto the lamellas of the screen facing the other side, on which a white European woman – an actress hired for this purpose – told the exact same story as the African woman in the first video in synchronisation. The viewer is deeply irritated by this projection, as the experiences and feelings described and the narrator's ‘foreign’ accent do not really fit in with the white woman's well-groomed appearance. However, this alienation effect raises the question of one's own ideas, namely that the ‘foreign’ in the depiction of the European woman triggers irritation, while it appears as a ‘natural’ identifying feature of the African woman. The European woman is obviously inconceivable as a foreigner, just as the African narrator is not as a non-foreigner. By finally confronting the viewer with the report on everyday life in detention pending deportation, Naujokaite's video installation forces him to confront his usual way of dealing with the ‘stranger’." Astrid Haas, in Das erinnerte Haus (Essen: Museum Folkwang, 2004)

“Neringa Naujokaite's video installation at the 2001 art fair had the confrontational appeal of a good billboard and yet was exactly the opposite, much more: a moving image and a still that moves. The architecture of projection and content causes passers-by to look at the screen repeatedly and, surprised, to go back and forth and look and listen and look. The young black woman with a round face and braided hair tells her interviewer off-screen how she feels in Germany and in deportation detention: bad. Laughing or almost crying, she balances between fear and joie de vivre in the vital tempo of her staccato German, which she has learnt from listening. As we walk on, her image disappears. Her voice remains, and becomes the voice of a now visible white woman with calm features. Her face is soon perfectly assembled from the lamellar structure of the concertina screen. The fact that the synchronised mouth movements cannot speak of her – the impression only strengthens the sense of the unacceptable fate of the other woman in a country that is not hers and does not accept her into its culture. It does us good to hear this in the art world: I wish someone would be good to me for once. If you stand in front of the double projection, which meets the vertical plastic wall jutting back and forth at acute angles from both sides, the intimate mixture between the bright, clear face and the dark, tense face is perfect. The identifiable love of the picture director is her unmistakable pictorial voice. I could have forgotten it in the midst of the art market business. Tony Oursler's nocturnal frenzy of faces and voices on Peter Zumthor's glass shed armour, which is an art museum, could not make a comparably convincing argument during the Bregenzer Festspiele, despite all the effort.” Marlis Grüterich, 2001

"In her installation Insert Name, Neringa Naujokaite addresses a central problem experienced by immigrants: the uninvolved language of fellow citizens who are ‘’theoretically‘’ interested in the concerns and needs of immigrants, but in reality do not want to know anything more about them. In large-format, collage-like video projections, Neringa Naujokaite stages the alienation and estrangement between citizens and non-citizens. She uses fictional dialogues spoken with the same text by two people from different backgrounds and in opposing life situations. Two synchronised video projections are aligned on a saw-toothed projection surface. Depending on the observer's point of view, a young African woman waiting for her deportation in the Neuss detention centre appears, describing her fate with clear emotional mimicry, or a pale European woman who recites the same text as a third party reading. The work emphasises questions of authenticity and alienation." Pavel Liška, in Venceremos/Sale (Regensburg: Stiftung Kunstforum Ostdeutsche Galerie, 2006)

Cross Word

2001. 9-channel video installation. Black and white, sound, 9 screens each 165 x 220 cm

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"Neringa Naujokaite uses material from mass media and advertising that accompany our daily lives. Her spatial video installation Cross + Word is both ‘ready made’ and a fundamental critique of the media at the same time. Radio conversations, the everyday soundscape of confessions, experiences and problems, are her source material. However, rather than paraphrasing spectacular and excessive confessional mania, the dignity of human feelings, often forgotten in the media, is countered here by means of a careful reappraisal commenting on the relationship between the publicity of the media and the privacy of the intimate. The artist recorded calls from radio broadcasts and illustrated the isolated texts with associative images: black and white, slowed-down shots and stills show faces with uncertain expressions, children playing, unfurnished interiors or street scenes. The images appear documentary, but at the same time their softly edited sequence clearly distinguishes them from the footage of the television industry. Painterly interruptions emerge, creating a flow of poetic counter-images to intimate monologues. The viewer is sucked into the rhythm and inner structure of the constantly changing reference fields of texts and image sequences.“ Sabine Maria Schmidt, in Neringa Naujokaite: Förderpreis für Bildende Kunst der Landeshauptstadt Düsseldorf 2002 (Dusseldorf: Kulturamt der Stadt Düsseldorf, 2003)

"The suggestion in Neringa Naujokaite's work also lies in the ability of her pictures to direct our gaze beyond them to a reality that cannot be depicted, a reality that comes close to us – with feelings, memories and our own sympathy. They are big feelings, big pictures that you can't keep at bay. You enter their space with its suggestive colourfulness, its semi-darkness, which does not give us any illusions, which does not offer us a 3D world, but involves us in layered, incomprehensible images that open up to our own inner world. Of course, we also see clichés, but not in the images – rather in what we recognise in them, our longings, fears and repressions. <...> The fleeting black and white images in the installation Cross + Word are excerpts from open, intersecting walls, from events without a recognisable history, and that is exactly why they come close to us. We pay attention to the presence of the visible because we don't know the stories. Everything is discovery, nothing is explained, but we look directly into the fleeting, the incomprehensible, the fragmentary, the real. It is strange and at the same time close; in this open, lonely, rushing, silent, perspectiveless offer of images and stories, we only see what we discover ourselves." Erich Franz, in Neringa Naujokaite (Lippstadt: Kunstverein Lippstadt e. V., 2005)

"For Neringa Naujokaite, an artist based in Cologne, the exploration of the relationship between the individual and society is a central aspect of her work. This is reflected in Naujokaite's works, which are deliberately multi-layered and impenetrable, as well as in the way in which she incorporates the exhibition space into the design of her video works. For her video installation Kreuz + Wort (2001), the artist recorded listener calls from radio programmes describing various, mostly personal experiences: beauty, partnership, family or illness were just some of the topics on which the unknown men and women commented. Sometimes banal issues alternated directly with serious problems, whereby the speakers and what moves them were never exposed to ridicule in Naujokaite's compilation of the calls. The artist combined these texts with various video sequences. The spoken words were accompanied by slow, solemn, but also cheerfully playful images in softly drawn black and white. In most cases, there was an associative connection between word and image, recalling the relationship between definition and solution word in the crossword puzzle, which the title of the work also recalled. Naujokaite reinforced this impression by setting up the nine video screens of her installation in such a way that visitors could move back and forth through the exhibition space as if they were in such a puzzle. With the calm flow of her sound and image narrative, Naujokaite's work also consciously set itself apart from the voyeurism of those media formats for which the individual only counts as a provider of sensational news and in which there is no room for the everyday, the average, the unremarkable." Astrid Haas, in Das erinnerte Haus (Essen: Museum Folkwang, 2004)

I am not compatible

1997. Slide installation. 2 slide projections, black and white photography, perspex object

"... two projected images show the face of a woman gazing forward. The faces reflect a mixture of defiance, melancholy and submission. Combined with the name of the work these expressions could tell us much: I do not own myself, I do not adapt or I can no longer be altered? The one face is seen as two: first behind prison bars, as a prisoner in the cell of the mind, in the second picture bare, without any limiting bars. Naujokaite worked in an artists studio on the premises of a psychiatric clinic. In the midst of her work she took time to acquaint herself with the patients and their everyday tasks, all the while keeping a working diary. Some of the patients agreed to appear in the pictures in the work. Later Naujokaite continued her studies in the field of literature (e.g. Oliver Sacks and Birger Sellin.)" Leevi Haapala, in Anna-Lea Kopperi, Neringa Naujokaite: Replace | Muutoksia (Rauma: Lönnström Art Museum, 1999)

"We do not perceive Neringa Naujokaite's images directly, they build up gradually, as inner images. They emerge from the blurred, as if veiled impressions, from the slow rhythm of the transformations and also from the layers of one's own memories and the feelings they evoke in the viewer. These are pictures that move – firstly because they largely fill the wall and dominate the space, but also because their veiled blurriness and shifting immobility make it harder to look. The gaze extends further than understanding and identification, further than the surface of the picture. Its transparency, its layering and open combinations and also the temporal rhythmic overlapping and sequences take the viewer beyond the visible, beyond the communication and the documentary. A similar interplay of impressions is also created in the installation I am Not Compatible ..., in which the same image can be seen twice, but appears completely different, once barred and once open. The model of a room cut into stripes also contributes to the resulting inner image – and the projected texts also play an intensifying role." Erich Franz, exhibition opening speech at the Kunstverein Lippstadt, 2005

Our Daily Puzzle

1997. Installation. Black and white photographs 90 x 106 cm each, slide projection

"The flickering projector throws an oversized crossword puzzle onto the white wall. The viewer is immediately immersed in it ready to solve it. But wait: black and white photos, television snapshots – lottery numbers, war scenes, stock market news – make it difficult to access the free letter boxes. The puzzle becomes even more puzzling; in combination with the current images, new meanings and associations are revealed. This installation by the young Lithuanian artist Neringa Naujokaite, now on display at the Mönter Book and Art Cabinet in Osterath, is to a certain extent the all-encompassing Entree into a contradictory world of images. <...> The banality of everyday life, television, advertising messages, crossword puzzles, corresponds with photographic snapshots of human life. Sadness, astonishment, loneliness, poverty, certainly and sadly banalities, are emphasised by the contrast with the optimistic promises of salvation in advertising, suddenly provoking, breaking through the lethargy, making us think." Thomas Pregl, The Rheiner (June 1997)

Bedburg Hau Hospital

1999. Video. Black and white, silent. 07:00 min

"The video camera analyses each image in turn, very precisely, by moving into the image, ‘zooming in’ so that only facial fragments like the eye and nose can be seen; these occasionally even dissolve completely, only to move back towards a long shot in the next moment and thus achieve a greater depth of field in the image. Whether the camera pans or changes focus, whether it moves closer or further away, the images always merge into one another so that the person is constantly mutating. The change of shots happens quite regularly and so quickly that the viewer cannot really adjust to them. Only occasionally does the camera pause briefly, as if to capture a particular detail, before moving on again. It is as if it is penetrating the patients' field of vision in order to get closer to their identity. But it doesn't succeed. <...> While the attempt to approach the individual through extreme closeness is doomed to failure, the resulting alienation opens up a subjective perception of the people. The faces, stripped of individual features, become an expression of the absent-mindedness of all the inmates of the institution: depending on the model, they read extreme suffering and even the image of their own death, meaningless laughter and the alternation between awake moments and stepping away from reality that is typical of Alzheimer's patients. In the defencelessness of these almost unrecognisable but soft and in their own way attractive features, something else is expressed, namely that human closeness to another person blurs their ‘unattractive sides’, which objectively speaking cannot be overlooked. Only the loving, benevolent gaze can see something else, something deeper, beyond the faults, even if it is the helplessness of the other person, their need for closeness and warmth. Subjectivity takes precedence over objectivity here." Danièle Perrier, in Bilder machen Leute: Die Inszenierung des Menschen in der Fotografie (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2007)

"With Neringa Naujokaite, in contrast, I had a completely different impression right from the start. (I got to know her work at the Ida Gerhardi Prize in Lüdenscheid, where she won the prize in 2003). Right from the start, I was impressed by the great sensuality of her work. I think this impression stems from the fact that these slides and video projections also initially appear very distant, intangible, as if veiled, but that they become more charged over time. So you definitely need some time to look at these images, you have to get involved with their changes, their rhythm, their transformations, in order to gradually realise: these transformations do not show different images, they are not episodes of a story that unfolds in time, but each work by Neringa Naujokaite actually consists of a single image, a still image, so to speak, which does not remain the same, however, but gradually grows together from its various transformations into a single image in the consciousness of the viewer. I suggest that we follow this process of growing together, of condensation, using the video entitled Bedburg Hau Hospital. It is a 7-minute video, but this film actually has no beginning and no end. It is a movement that emerges from still images and their changing focus. Its theme, the common theme of these images, is not the different faces, but the common theme develops from the inaccessibility of these faces, their appearance and yet remaining elusive. This can also be felt in the facial expressions: a contactlessness of the gaze, a strangeness, a remaining closed off despite the search for contact. The experience of the picture has something to do with these faces, which the artist photographed in the psychiatric clinic in Bedburg Hau. But, as I said, it is not a reportage, but a gradually increasing sensual expression that has a great deal to do with the detachment, with the unsteadiness, the as if veiled and transparent nature of the portrait photos that appear here as a video." Erich Franz, exhibition opening speech at the Kunstverein Lippstadt, 2005

Yesterday Today Tomorrow

1996. Object. Black and white photography, 2 advertising panels with a triple-changing image surface, 66,5 x 180 x 7 cm

"The relationship between the individual and the prevailing social structure moves back and forth between the two. Lately, the individual´s possibilities to affect change through the democratic processes of decision making have turned out to be infinitesimally small. Individuals, such as activists in civic organisations and others, have turned to seeking change within those fields where their influence can be directly observed: control over the own body, modifications in eating habits and consumption, moulding the immediate environment. Artistic activities can also form a forum for discussions on the changes taking place in society. What tale of changes do the works in the exhibition Replace - Muutoksia tell? And of what kind are these changes? Can changes be ellocated any specific position in the nature of the works or in the activities around them? The exhibited works tell of the reciprocal nature of change: discussions on art often progress from the individual experience to the general.
<…> In her works, Neringa Naujokaite takes the spectator through the decisive phases of the lives of different people. As these tales press closer to the viewer their focused silence makes it possible to hear excerpts of the living history of the European way of life. Rather than to try to define the works, it seems more interesting to search for the messages of change which the works wish to convey to us, who live in their time. The keys to the interpretation can be found in the world wrapped around us – some even closer than we think. The English title for the exhibition, Replace, gives us a clearer view of the nature of the exhibition – a definition in a dictionary gives us restoring, substituting, exchanging or taking the place of something – all actions in movement. <…> Naujokaite makes use of the tools of mass media and promotion, which mould our sense of everyday reality. She is not content with only borrowing these tools but tries to reinstate the humanity forgotten by the media and to rediscover the privateness of pictures spread in public, in the memories of family albums and diaries." Leevi Haapala, in Anna-Lea Kopperi, Neringa Naujokaite: Replace | Muutoksia (Rauma: Lönnström Art Museum, 1999)

“Whilst Neringa Naujokaite, with her Daily Puzzle installation and the no less impressive Time Pictures, makes contradictions in the present visible, in her third exhibited work she chooses the historical contrast. Using an advertising medium with a triple-changing image surface, similar to the moving advertising boards in football stadiums, she makes images of women, which are still strongly influenced by upbringing and religion, rotate. Neringa Naujokaite: In the past as well as today, a woman is concerned with the same issues: from family and social status to the beauty ideal and body cult!” Thomas Pregl, The Rheiner (June 1997)

The Holly

1995. Installation. Sculpture, slide, bandage, foam rubber

"In a later work installed in the chapel of a hospital, (The Holy, 1995), Naujokaite approaches the dialogue between art and church from the viewpoint of a process of physical and mental healing. The location of the work brought forward two institutions which traditionally have defined the boundary between mental illness and health. Three mattresses wrapped in bandages and dressings formed a triptych on an altar, with the painted picture or the anthropomorphic impressions of the shroud of Turin replaced by reflections of the warmth of living bodies and suffering brought into the light. Corpses freed of the dressings were also present, touching the layers of the mind." Leevi Haapala, in Anna-Lea Kopperi, Neringa Naujokaite: Replace | Muutoksia (Rauma: Lönnström Art Museum, 1999)

Resettlement

1993. Installation. 2 objects of layered paper each 150 x 100 x 25 cm, perspex, 3 slide projections, sound, 10 collages each 30 x 42 cm

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"Neringa Naujokaite´s work is based on dialogues with the social environment and the individuals acting in it. The works find their subjects in our recent history and its new interpretations – in memories borne in common by different generations. The installations mainly consist of slide projections but also include text fragments, objects and sound tapes which enchance the atmosphere. Naujokaite emphasises the immaterial nature of the works and also the changes in atmosphere between the public nature of the event and the feeling of intimacy relayed by the works. Naujokaite is interested in the way cinematic expression traverses the limits set by time and space. <...> The installation (Resettlement, 1993) tells us of the lives of two women in Lithuania and Hungary during the time of totalitarianism. The shadows of the concentration camps form the background. Both the artist's mother and the old lady now living in Dusseldorf, whom Naujokaite has come to know, have only recently been able to compare their experiences in a new light. In the safe dusk around the installations, which doesn't however lighten the feeling of personal losses, the tales are again taken to the spectator for a new evaluation. In the projections, yellowed pictures of a bourgeois family are reflected onto a thick layer of paper. Pile of papers on the wall reveal the dimensional nature of time, from which different things rise to the surface as fleeting glimpses, only to sink back into the background." Leevi Haapala, in Anna-Lea Kopperi, Neringa Naujokaite: Replace | Muutoksia (Rauma: Lönnström Art Museum, 1999)

"Typical of Naujokaite's more recent work is, for instance, the spatial installation Resettlement, in which the artist makes the past present: sculptural objects made of collaged paper, audio elements as well as text and photo documents illuminate the fate of her mother and a friend through the dictatorships in Lithuania and Hungary. Light is shed – literally – on the lives of the two women: For as is often the case in Naujokaite's work, the decisive factor in Resettlement is that the various materials and levels of the installation are linked together by multiple staggered slide projections. Similar to Resettlement, the impression of old photographic materials dominates the adjacent silk screen print. And regardless of how one has to differentiate between a three-dimensional spatial installation and a two-dimensional screen print, there are in any case fundamental similarities, insofar as the viewer is again confronted with different sections of reality and several levels of representation in view of the serigraphy. Here, too, there are unmistakable correspondences and parallels between the different elements, but everything seems even more strongly determined by the law of opposition: The irregular stands against the regular, the sketchy against the flatly formulated, the handwritten against the figurative. How could such formal contrasts not also be considered significant in terms of content when one realises that in the historical photo document of a park bench, which suggests cosiness, it is marked with the words “Nur für Arier” (Only for Aryans). No question that horror is hidden here in the everyday. In Naujokaite's art it becomes clear without pointing a finger. There is also no question that in her screen printing – as in her installations in general – we are dealing with a precise art of reflection, which aims unobtrusively but effectively at the viewer's consciousness." Ulrich Fernkorn, in 5/20 (München: Bayerische Hypotheken- und Wechsel-Bank Aktiengesellschaft, 1996)

"In the work Resettlement, the sculptural process of concealment and reawakening is shown to visualise the phenomenon of time. Two panels, pasted over in dozens of layers of newspaper, provide the sculptural background and projection surface. Like deposits of time, the temporal documents are sealed by the superimposition. This first layer of the work is above all an independent sculpture. Perspex panes are hung in front of the two backgrounds, through which they are each projected a slide. Some parts of the image projection, the faces, are visible on the panes even before the background due to several matt sections on the perspex panes. Only the shadow falls on the background on the wall. This second layer of the work concerns the spatial continuation of the wall object. Invisible bearings are continued in transparent layers such as spatial grounds, foreground, centre and background. Now, once again, two slides are projected from the front, whose appearance is spatialised by the reproduction at different distances. The homogeneous image is also broken down into layers. Two family pictures can be seen, the picture of the mother in Stalin's labour camp and the family picture of the friend and neighbour before her family was exterminated in a concentration camp. In an incredibly quiet and careful way, Neringa Naujokaite uses the sculpture of space, light and time as a parable of history. The sculpture turns into an image of history, like a closed book whose pages become literarily transparent. The silent language reflects the fate of people close to her. Formal and content-related processes condense into the medium of time." Thomas Kesseler, in Made in Mauritius 1994–1998 + Folgen (Oldenburg: Oldenburger Kunstverein, 1998)

Publications

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Monographs

Neringa Naujokaite: Art Deco (Dortmund: Verlag Kettler, 2021). Texts: Monika Krikštopaitytė, Giedrė Jankevičiūtė. ISBN 978-3-86206-924-8

Neringa Naujokaite: Installations, Video and Photography (Düsseldorf: capture, 2016). Text: Bernhard Stumpfhaus

Neringa Naujokaite: Other Sight (Dortmund: Verlag Kettler, 2013). Texts: Ursula Panhans-Bühler, Angelika Vauti-Scheucher. ISBN 978-3-86206-299-7

Neringa Naujokaite: Between the Lines (Gütersloh: Kunstverein Kreis Gütersloh e. V., 2009). Text: Daniel Neugebauer

Neringa Naujokaite: Stencils (Bad Ems: Künstlerhaus Schloß Balmoral, 2008). Text: Danièle Perrier

Neringa Naujokaite: Gravity (Bielefeld: Artists Unlimited e. V., 2006). Text: Daniel Neugebauer

Neringa Naujokaite (Lippstadt: Kunstverein Lippstadt e. V., 2005). Text: Erich Franz. ISBN 3-9806707-8-3

Neringa Naujokaite: Förderpreis für Bildende Kunst der Landeshauptstadt Düsseldorf 2002 (Düsseldorf: Kulturamt der Stadt Düsseldorf, 2003). Texts: Sabine Maria Schmidt, Michael Voets

Anna-Lea Kopperi, Neringa Naujokaite: Replace | Muutoksia (Rauma: Lönnström Art Museum, 1999). Texts: Maija Koskinen, Leevi Haapala. ISBN 952-9847-12-2

Neringa Naujokaite: Unser Tagesrätsel (Meerbusch: Konrad Mönter, 1997)

Selected group catalogues and publications

Paradise found (Graz: kunstGarten Graz, 2024). Texts: Radka Denemarková and o. ISBN 978-3-200-10039-8

Equation with Unknowns. Lithuanian Artists in Germany from 1945 till Now. Ed. Rasa Žukienė and Dalia Kuizinienė (Vilnius: The Lithuanian National Museum of Art, 2023). Texts: Rasa Žukienė, Dalia Kuizinienė, Birutė Pankūnaitė, Ilona Mažeikienė. ISBN 978-609-426-185-5

DIE GROSSE 2022 (Düsseldorf: Verein zur Veranstaltung von Kunstausstellungen e. V., 2022)

Monika Krikštopaitytė, „Autentika yra asmeniška“, 7md 27 (2021), 10

Thomas Hirsch, „Neringa Naujokaite: Soziale Räume“, biograph 9 (2021), 52–53

The Dream of Living (Dortmund: Verlag Kettler, 2021). Texts: Anne Rodler, Jessica Krämer, Julia Haack, Kristina Wotschel, Wiebke Siever. ISBN 978-3-86206-899-9

Duesseldorf Photo Weekend 2019 (Düsseldorf: Clara Sels, 2019)

DIE GROSSE 2019 (Düsseldorf: Verein zur Veranstaltung von Kunstausstellungen e. V., 2019)

25 Jahre Videokunst Förderpreis Bremen (Bremen: Filmbüro Bremen e. V., 2018). Texts: Rose Pfister, Louise Lindlar, Ilona Rieke, Marikke Heinz-Hoek, Patrik Thomas and o.

62. Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen (Oberhausen: Karl Maria Laufen, 2016). ISBN 978-3-87468-344-9

OpenART 2015 Örebro (Örebro: Örebro Municipality, 2015). Text: Lars Jonnson. ISBN 978-91-637-9006-5

Marler Medienkunst-Preise: Sound | Video International Competition 2013/2014 (Marl: Wienand, 2014). Texts: Georg Elben, Karl Karst, Melanie Bono, Hubert Steins. ISBN 978-3-86832-265-1

Jetzt und Damals: Rückblick auf 20 Jahre Ida Gerhardi Preis. Ed. Hilke Gesine Möller (Lüdenscheid: Städtische Galerie Lüdenscheid, 2009)

Balmoral 2007/2008: Balmoral Blend. Ed. Künstlerhaus Schloß Balmoral (Berlin: Argobooks, 2008). Texts: Danièle Perrier, Robert Fleck, Verena Kuni, Birgit Weidmann and o. ISBN 978-3-9812552-0-1

Bilder machen Leute: Die Inszenierung des Menschen in der Fotografie. Ed. Landesmuseum Koblenz (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2007). Texts: Britta Köhn, Roswitha Neu-Kock, Danièle Perrier, Wolfgang Horbert, Katrin Seidel and o. ISBN-10: 3775721703

Gut + Böse: Politik, Kunst, Gesellschaft (Lüdenscheid: Städtische Galerie Lüdenscheid, 2007). Text: Hilke Gesine Möller

Venceremos/Sale (Regensburg: Stiftung Kunstforum Ostdeutsche Galerie, 2006). Text: Pavel Liška. ISBN 3-89188-112-6

International Biennale of Contemporary Art 2005: A Second Sight (Prague: National Gallery in Prague, 2005). Texts: Katarína Rybková, Ivan Hartmann, Svĕtlana Michajlová, Milan Knížák, Jiří Surůvka and o. ISBN 80-7035-301-5

LichtRouten 2004 (Lüdenscheid: Lüdenscheider Stadtmarketing GmbH, 2005). Text: Bettina Pelz. ISBN 3-934687-34-2

Pathos/Gefühle (Frankfurt: Raumpool e. V., 2004). Text: Felix Ruhöfer

Das erinnerte Haus (Essen: Museum Folkwang, 2004). Texts: Astrid Haas, Jan Albers, Hildegard Kurt, Necmi Sönmez. ISBN 3-00-014439-0

Here we Come!!! (Bonn: Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, 2003)

Stefania Garassini, „Ars Electronica 2002“, SHIFT (2002.10.29)

UNPLUGGED – Art as the Scene of Global Conflicts: Ars Electronica 2002. Ed. Gerfried Stocker and Christine Schöpf (Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2002). ISBN 3-7757-1207-0

Tische der Kommunikation (Essen: Museum Folkwang, 2001). Texts: Necmi Sönmez, Eric Boog, Andrea Wendt and o.

Rendez-vous: Patienten begegnen Künstlern (Stuttgart: Robert-Bosch-Krankenhaus GmbH, 2000). Texts: Hans-Jürgen Firnkorn, Martina Waetermans, Evelyn Weiss, Heinz Weiß

Next Stop – eine Sonderfahrt (Thun: Kunstmuseum Thun, 1998)

Made in Mauritius 1994–1998 + Folgen (Oldenburg: Oldenburger Kunstverein, 1998). Texts: Gertrud Wagenfeld-Pleister, Nicolai Sokolow, Thomas Appel, Thomas Kesseler and o.

Katalog zur Austausch-Ausstellung von Gegenwartskunst zwischen der Staatlichen Universität für Bildende Künste und Musik Tokio und der Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (Tokio: Tokyo Geijutu Daigaku, 1997)

Das Heilige (Recklinghausen: Philipp-Nicolai-Gemeinde Recklinghausen / Evangelische Erwachsenenbildung Recklinghausen / Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten Marl, 1996). Text: Frederike von Eckardstein

Kunstzeit (Bochum: Kai Brückner, 1996). Text: Kai Brückner

Denk ich an Deutschland: Installationen - Objekte - Skulpturen - Malerei - Zeichnungen. Ed. Galerie Annelie Brusten (Düsseldorf: Heinrich-Heine-Institut, 1996). Texts: Joseph A. Kruse, Manfred Brusten, Heidemarie Vahl and o.

5/20 (München: Bayerische Hypotheken- und Wechsel-Bank Aktiengesellschaft, 1996). Text: Ulrich Fernkorn