Vytautas Kasiulis Art Museum sets stage for a dialogue of postwar and today’s 17-year-olds  

Exhibition opening at 2 pm 4 April, 2025

At 2 pm 4 April, 2025, Vytautas Kasiulis Art Museum (VKAM) opens an international exhibition We Are 17 coordinated by Meno avilys. The event is anchored to and inspired by the Dutch film-maker and photographer Johan van der Keuken and his photographic series composed of 30 portraits of adolescents, shot in 1955 by a 17-year-old artist. These spontaneous, candid shots capture the generation of postwar teenagers as they advance towards adulthood. The series, emblematic of the artist’s nascent career, reflects on a young individual’s feelings in different contexts of space and time.  

 

The photographic images immortalize daily life of postwar youth and their adolescent impatience; there, even restful moments are pregnant with anticipation of a new life on their doorstep. The emphatic, sensitive Johan van der Keuken’s art is part of postwar – photography – and – film humanist tradition. The images on display are printed from the artist’s original negatives using contemporary technique of pigment ink.   

 

The exhibition sets the stage for an interesting dialogue, that involves over a hundred of images by young Catalonian, Lithuanian and Romanian photographers hanging alongside with the artwork by Johan van der Keuken. In Lithuania, Meno avilys have organized five creative workshops at Lithuanian schools. Inspired by the Dutch artist, the 17-year-olds took portraits of their contemporaries and of senior individuals, who were 17 in 1955. The guides for the teenagers’ creative process were photographers Artūras Morozovas, Vilma Samulionytė, Aistė Žegulytė (Lithuania), Ingrid Ferrer, Tanit Plana, Mònica Roselló, Berta Vicente Salas (Catalonia), Lorena Dumitrascu, Melissa Ivana, Luiza Puiu (Romania).  

The visual artwork is accompanied by sound recordings of the participants sharing some of their experiences and dreams.  

 

The exhibition We Are 17 shows different generations in dialogue and invites the audience to reflect on their own experience of adolescence and their identity. Though the images of 17-year-olds taken in 2025 and in 1955 are 70 years and thousands of miles apart, their experience and dreams are likely to have plenty in common.     

 

The exhibition will be accompanied by educational events and film screenings at Vytautas Kasiulis Art Museum, Skalvija Film Theatre and Meno Avilys Cinematheque. The events will include some of the young participants to help to communicate how the young generation of today perceives the world and reflects it using photography.  

 

We invite you to discover this unique project, intended to inspire to ruminate on our identity and future visions. The exhibition We Are 17 will run at the Vytautas Kasiulis Art Museum from 4 April to 11 May. It will subsequently travel to Barcelona Contemporary Culture Centre (CCBC) and to Timișoara.  

 

 

Curators A Bao A Q and Érika Goyarrola 

Coordinator for Lithuania Meno Avilys 

Exhibition architect Jurgis Dagelis 

Designer Jurgis Griškevičius 

 

 

The internation exhibition We Are 17 is part of the international creative photography project from which it also borrows its title. In Lithuania, the project is carried on in partnership with: Vytautas Kasiulis Museum of Art, “Saulėtekio” General Education School in Bezdonys, Vilnius region; “Šilo” Gymnasium in Juodšiliai; Adomas Brakas’ Art School in Klaipėda; “Aitvaras” Gymnasium in Klaipėda; Šeduva Gymnasium, Radviliškis region; “Danė”, Social Services Centre in Klaipėda, and Šeduva Nursing Home.     

 

Project and exhibition is organized by the Culture Association A Bao A Qu (Catalonia), Culture Association Contrasens (Romania), Media Education and Research Centre Meno avilys (Lithuania). 

 

Project and exhibition funded by: European Union programme Creative Europe, Culture strand, Lithuanian Culture Institute.

 

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1 Goštauto st, Vilnius, Lithuania
+370 5 261 6764.
kasiulio.muziejus@lndm.lt

See also

Exhibition

We are 17