THE WALLS REMEMBER HOW IT HAPPENED
The street art project "Remember the Walls" started as an initiative dedicated to the historical memory of the Vilnius Jewish Quarter. The idea was to restore the daily lives of people living in the Jewish Quarter of Vilnius from authentic interwar photographs.
In total, six works "Remember the Walls" were created in Vilnius. You will find all the works on our interactive map:
The creative process consisted of certain stages:
The initial phase of the project was a photo search. After finding a really large number of photos, the next step was to select which ones would be used for the project.
Lots of beautiful moments and interesting characters looked out of those shots.
From an artistic point of view, such things as the play of light and darkness in the shots, the character of the figure and face of the person photographed, and the quality of the photograph played a major role in the photo selection process.
Second stage: creating creative projects by drawing a portrait based on old photography.
One of the biggest creative challenges was trying to create characters from faded images that lacked visual specificity with strict stencil stylistics, while not losing their portrait resemblance.
Third stage: adaptation of the works of art to the stencil technique so that each layer of color can be sprayed separately on the wall.
Fourth stage: implementation of the work on the wall, using spray paint and stencils made in the printing house. The final result is visible only after all work has been completed and the stencils have been removed.
In this way, a historic moment is revived. Almost a century-old images from the Jewish Quarter are revived - on the same borders that witnessed those moments.
Each piece has its own story. In some cases, it is known exactly what the residents of the Jewish Quarter captured in the photos were engaged in, in others, one can only speculate. Sometimes the exact location of the photo is known, and sometimes only the approximate coordinates. One of the works on the facade of the Glass Hotel is based on a photograph taken in exactly the same place.
The process of working with each piece lasted from one to several days, depending on the weather conditions and the complexity of the composition.
PROJECT TEAM
Lina Šlipavičiūtė - idea and creation of sketches (artistic projects) based on authentic photographs.
Lina Šlipavičiūtė and Lauryna Kiškytė - transfer of artistic projects to the walls.
Šarūnas Černiauskas - project communication and an additional pair of hands in many other works.
Andrius Kenstavičius - preparation and navigation of architectural projects in the bureaucratic jungle.
The project was implemented with the funds of the Vilnius City Municipality program “I Create Vilnius”.