Home and the Security Dilemma. Shifting Representation of Home in Lithuanian Visual Arts of the 1990s

Abstract

The article explores representations of home in Lithuanian visual arts of the 1990s, approaching home as a space that provides shelter and security against various types of threats—ideological or physical. It seeks to foreground safety and security— and its absence—as a defining imperative in artistic articulations of home during this period. In late Soviet era, prior to Lithuania’s Independence, artists frequently conceptualised home as a metaphorical shelter, a safe space for creative freedom and the exchange of ideas. The study therefore asks whether home remained—or became—a safe (or safer) space following the collapse of the Soviet regime and the disappearance of censorship as a source of threat. It further considers if the concept of home for artists in the 1990s retained its earlier connotations of security, and how any shifts influenced the representation of home in visual art. The article advances the hypothesis that in the late Soviet period, artists viewed homes as safe spaces that, to some extent, shielded them from ideology and censorship. In the 1990s, however, artists began to approach home from a domestic-material perspective, reflecting a need for individual security and a demythologised attention to everyday life. The study argues that homes constitute a distinct spatial phenomenon, forming a unique configuration of time and space. As Mary Douglas has suggested, while homes are directly related to space, they are not necessarily fixed; rather, they emerge through a relationship between physical space and subjective (existential) experience. In this sense, homes are spaces that draw the line between (in)security, allowing security itself to be understood as a phenomenon with a spatial dimension. The article first defines the concept of home, highlighting the connection between security and home-space, before addressing the notion of home(s) as a scarcity in the 1990s. It then analyses works by selected artists to examine how home was reflected in their practices. To emphasise that the issue of home concerned artists across various fields, the article focuses on works in painting (Eglė Ridikaitė), photography (Arturas Valiauga), and sculpture (Mindaugas Navakas). The analysis reveals that the dimension of security in the 1990s was based on openness to the Other, allowing home to be treated from an intersubjective perspective: Ridikaitė’s painting series Žiedų Street 50 suggests that home is not only a (safe) space inhabited by its owner but also a space to which, referencing Emmanuel Levinas, the Other can be invited. Security thus shifts from a condition of enclosure towards one of openness. Valiauga’s photographic series A Week Has Eight Days highlights how domestic space can preserve layers of past time, producing a form of heterochrony. Navakas’s sculptures Shelter 1 and Shelter T represent home as oriented toward the future, challenging the idea of a shelter as merely temporary. Taken together, these perspectives frame the Lithuanian 1990s as a contradictory period marked by insecurity, uncertainty, yet equally by openness and anticipation.