CV
Margins and Miracles
Goodbye Gestures
Yellow Brick Road
What Leaks Through
Refresh Rate
After Affect
Hardly Beating Hearts
CV
Margins and Miracles
Goodbye Gestures
Yellow Brick Road
What Leaks Through
Refresh Rate
After Affect
Hardly Beating Hearts
Pen on paper, digital print
A monumental comic-like drawing leads us through the streets of Vilnius, London, and Oslo. The first Lithuanian Baltic Pride march in 2010, confrontations within the LGBTQIA+ community during London Pride in 2018, and the shootings in Oslo in 2022 — events personally experienced by the artist — are woven into a graphic narrative about living under constantly shifting conditions of insecurity. The declarative protest signs, silent politicians, and the artist’s “off-screen” voice captured in the drawing return to view what usually remains outside the boundaries of the official narrative.
The comic-book aesthetic points to traditions of queer self-publishing, alternative archives, and autobiographical storytelling — accessible, less institutionally controlled forms of media that have been important to artists and activists. One of the exhibition’s striking elements is Kovalevskij’s gesture of reclaiming the pink triangle. Once a symbol of violence and stigma, used in Nazi concentration camps to mark homosexual men, it is transformed here into a platform for queer voices, where being together and resting become forms of resistance.
“Margins. Miracles.” draws the viewer into a non-chronological encounter with fear, trauma, solidarity, and the refusal to remain silent — all on a deeply human scale.
2021 - ongoing
Polyester, beetroot and kefyr
In 2026, as Margins & Miracles exhibition entered its final month at the National Gallery of Art, Goodbye Gestures returns as a slow wave goodbye and a welcome to new beginnings. Here, the gesture also carries a wish for LGBTQIA+ art to become more visibly and permanently represented within Lithuania’s national art institutions — perhaps, one day, as part of the permanent collection and display of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art and National Art Gallery.
As anthropologist Krystal D’Costa notes in Scientific American, farewell gestures help maintain social bonds. Short goodbyes signal temporary separation, while longer rituals mark deeper transitions into new, unfamiliar spaces.
Installation view. Goodbye Gestures at National Gallery of Art Vilnius 2026
Installation view. Goodbye Gestures in “To live as a Mayfly” exhibition Tromsø 2021
Installation view. Goodbye Gestures in “To live as a Mayfly” exhibition Tromsø 2021
Installation view “Goodbye Gestures” at Contemporary Art Centre Vilnius 2025
Installation view “Goodbye Gestures” at Contemporary Art Centre Vilnius 2025
2023
Ceramics
The work also references a childhood book about Ela and her dog Toto, highlighting parallels between the Soviet Ela and the Western Dorothy. Both characters are removed from their gardens and set on a journey along a yellow brick road—a path that ultimately leads nowhere, reflecting the tension between imagination and reality.
2014
Found door, daylight fluorescent tubes
A door stands in a permanent state of refusal. It cannot open fully, nor can it close. From within, a white light leaks outward, offering neither clarity nor concealment. The work reflects a world suspended in crisis, where systems meant to regulate, protect, or explain no longer function cleanly. What emerges is not an answer, but a persistent, unresolved pressure.
Installation view group show “The Unanswered Q” at the Contemporary Art Centre Vilnius 2014
2018
HD Video, 16:9, 14:56 min
Wood frames, pencil on paper, digital print on paper. Construction tarp, wooded bench, dimensions variable.
2017
Video HD 32:9 11:59 Colour, silicone, flourecent lights, pencil on paper, human sweat,
The project is composed of and operates within virtual, real, and augmented spaces.
The project depicts human everyday life and the existence of that everydayness across different layers of reality—from virtuality to augmented reality. It develops questions that challenge post-experiential perceptions.
The project depicts human everyday life and the existence of that everydayness across different layers of reality—from virtuality to augmented reality. It develops questions that challenge post-experiential perceptions.