Soil
This project examines the relationship to place among contemporary Lithuanian emigrants gathered in some of the largest communities in the United Kingdom – in Beckton, East London, Peterborough, and Boston – and their attempts to create a kind of substitute for Lithuania abroad. This raises a central question of values: which “soil” becomes more important to a contemporary Lithuanian emigrant – the one created abroad or the one from which they originate?
The project approaches this question through the motif of soil popularised and emphasised by the Lithuanian émigré writers known as the Žemininkai. Drawn from Lithuanian folk culture, in their writing it became an existential symbol of the significance of and longing for the homeland.
Using analogue photographic processes, areas of soil photographed in Lithuania and in the largest Lithuanian communities in the United Kingdom were transferred onto a single photographic surface. By juxtaposing images from different locations and using a masking technique, a line less than one millimetre thick – a perimeter – was deliberately produced. It becomes the main visual conflict in the work, marking the incompatibility between these territories and values. The resulting discrepancies prevent the new territory, intended to substitute for the homeland, from fully coinciding with the enduring significance of the place of origin, while also foregrounding the need for social security and material stability.