Non-photographers' photography as non-photography
SetP Stanikas were among the first to challenge the notion of "high art photography" in the context of Lithuanian contemporary art by using a point-and-shoot camera as a device that simply captures reality.
A point-and-shoot compact camera can also be understood metaphorically, as a kind of strategy for seeing and constructing an image. In the first half of the 1990s, Stanikas, along with several other artists of the time, transformed and reformed the language of photography with formal and semantic content that had previously been considered alien to true art (and true artistic photography).
SetP Stanikas are non-photographers, non-sculptors, non-painters, non-illustrators and non-filmmakers. But they take photographs, mould, paint, draw, and make films. Photography is an important part of their work. They invite the audience in Nida for a conversation-discussion.
SetP Stanikas (Svajonė and Paulius Stanikas) are artists whose career spans almost three decades.They have participated in many prestigious exhibitions and projects around the world, including the international Venice Biennale (they represented Lithuania at the 50th Venice Biennale), the Liverpool, Moscow and Beijing biennales, the Pompidou Centre, the Vu Gallery in Paris, the White Box Gallery in New York, and the Other Gallery in Shanghai, among others.
After their successful debut at the Venice Biennale in 2003, Stanikas were invited to teach at the French School of Contemporary Art (Studio national des arts contemporains), Le Fresnoy. In 2008, their video works were featured in the international exhibition Night of Images (Dans la nuit des images) at the Grang Palais in Paris. In the same year, their diptych Fall was exhibited at the exhibition Traces of the Sacred (Traces su Sacre) at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. In 2012, they produced the installation The Worker, the Peasant and the Eagle at the Nuite blanche event in Trocadero Park. In the same year, they were invited to teach at the Biarritz Roceilles School of Fine Arts (l‘Ecole Superieure d‘Art des Rocailles a Biarritz).
