Nida Art Colony, an artist-in-residence program and doctoral school located on the Curonian Spit—a peninsula separating the Baltic Sea from the Curonian Lagoon that is shared by both Lithuania and Russia—was selected to represent Lithuania at the Fifty-Eighth Venice Biennale, which will take place from May 11, 2019 to November 24, 2019.

The colony will present an operatic performance, titled Sun and Sea, by Lina Lapelyte, Vaiva Grainyte, and Rugile Barzdžiukaite. The setting of the production will be a makeshift beach area where performers lie on the ground in their bathing suits looking up and the audience looks down at them from above. The artists described the staging as “a counter-monumental, anti-baroque theatre.”

The piece was initially developed during the authors’ residency at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in 2016. The project has been presented at Palermo Galerie in Stuttgart, Germany, and the National Gallery of Arts in Vilnius. Earlier this year, the work earned the artists the Borisas Dauguvietis Earring Award for their innovation and originality. 

The 2019 edition of the work will be produced by Rasa Antanavičiūtė, the executive director of the VAA Nida Art Colony, and curated by Lucia Pietroiusti, the public programs curator at the Serpentine Galleries in London.