Lina Lapelytė (b.1984, Kaunas) is an artist living and working in London and Vilnius. Her performance-based practice flirts with pop culture, explores gender stereotypes, ageing and nostalgia. Her works often engage trained and untrained performers in ‘singing’ through a wide range of genres, such as mainstream pop and opera to question vulnerability and silencing. Her collaborative opera work with Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė and Vaiva Grainytė, Have a Good Day! received several awards and tours extensively as well as the durational performance Sun and Sea (Marina), which represented Lithuania at the 58th Venice Biennale (2019) and received the Golden Lion award for the best national participation. Lapelytė’s most recent work Currents (2020) was conceived with Mantas Petraitis (Implant Architecture) as a large-scale, site-specific installation and performance for the second edition of the Riga Biennale – RIBOCA2.
In this operatic interview, artist Lina Lapelytė speaks of how music, musicians and scores enunciate shared forms of being and belonging as they relate to gender and life under capitalism.