The Colonnade of Mykolas Žilinskas Art Gallery, Nepriklausomybės square 12, Kaunas
September 25th – October 24th, 2021

Have you ever wondered when the first graffiti was created? What about the first mural? When looking for the beginnings of graffiti, some urban art researchers think back to the times when people drew in caves or when the first signs in the streets of Pompeii were created . However the beginnings of modern street art are usually traced back to the inscriptions and paintings created on various surfaces (from buses and trains to private planes or even the fences of Zoos) back in the 1960s. No one was indifferent to the new form of urban expression. Though, only a few were happy about them, most were seriously revolted. 

The exhibition “From Vandalism to Heritage: Street Art in Kaunas”, curated by Milda Žiūkaitė, is dedicated to the rarely noticed beginnings of urban art in Kaunas that trace back to Soviet times. The visitors are invited to deepen their knowledge of often mixed up main terms of street art, such as graffiti, mural, stencil, as well as to learn how the first graffiti artists in Kaunas got their materials needed for painting. No less interesting aspects of the exhibition explore questions such as - what forms of street art were most popular in different decades, what was the reaction of news outlets to these painters. Also, how a practice that in the last decades of the twentieth century was deemed as vandalism became an art form beloved by citizens that already attracted some informal forms of heritage conservation.