Audra Vau

Audra Vau was born in 1970 and studied at the National School of Art in Vilnius. She is a leading multimedia artist of the Baltic region, combining photography, video and sculpture. Her works have been shown extensively in Lithuania, e.g. at the Contemporary Art Center in Vilnius, and internationally at Christine König Gallery and Max Lust Gallery, both in Vienna as well more recently at Galerie Lazarew in Paris. In addition, Audra took part in the exhibition Edge of Chaos with Gianluca Malgeri (Italy), LaToya Frazier (USA) and Egle Rake (Lithuania), curated by Vita Zaman and Nicola Vassell, during the Venice Biennale in 2015.

Her intriguing large scale photographs were taken under the full moon, with long exposure times, some of them in her own garden in Lithuania, others in Crete. This recent work series is entitled “Held Breath” which for her can be taken as a personal attitude towards life, as a small gesture to focus on the challenges of every day. At the same time, it can also be applied more generally to the situation of her home country, which has been exposed to a lot of political pressure for a long time, so that people were getting used to “holding their breath”. Her striking video works notably include a close-up face to face meeting with the eminent Lithuanian fluxus artist Jonas Mekas, shot in recent years in London.