EMBODIED PARALLELS. Tamara Pathak's solo exhibition

At VMU Art Gallery "101" – Tamara Pathak's solo exhibition "Embodied Parallels" Since November 5, the VMU Art Gallery "101" (Muitinės St. 7, Kaunas) has been hosting a solo exhibition by photo artist Tamara Pathak titled "Embodied Parallels". "Embodied Parallels" is an exploration of the body, the self, and the possibilities of their representation, where the body becomes not so much an object of representation, but a medium through which we experience ourselves and the world. In the exhibition, the body is revealed fragmentarily, through surface, movement, ornament, light, and trace. It is not presented as a coherent, stable, or finally knowable form – but rather as a constantly changing state, existing between the visible and the imagined, the physical and the emotional, the individual and the collective. The title "Embodied Parallels" refers to several simultaneously existing realities of embodiment. The body can be physical and emotional, one's own and another's, visible and imagined, static and constantly moving, all at once. These states do not replace each other, but exist side by side, overlap, and sometimes become inseparable. The body becomes the place where these parallels meet. The exhibition also asks how much of our bodily experience truly belongs only to us. Although the body is the most intimate territory of individual experience, the things experienced through it – touch, vulnerability, closeness, movement, breathing, memory, self-observation – are universal. Therefore, the individual body gradually becomes a site of shared human experience. By abandoning the specific portrait, the artist does not move away from the human, but paradoxically draws closer to it. In these works, the body is not finished. It is constantly being formed anew – through looking, feeling, remembering, and imagining. Its boundaries may be clear, but the experience that takes place within them remains fluid. Therefore, the exhibition becomes not so much a representation of the body, but a space where the body can be experienced as a relationship: between self and other, between image and viewer, between matter and memory. "Embodied Parallels" invites you not to look at the body, but simply to be in the body.

Tamara Pathak studied Art History at VMU and Photography and Media Art at VAA; she teaches and writes texts. In her artistic practice, she analyzes the problematic nature of body representation, highlighting the presented realistic image as a limitation to perception and belief in the visible body. The artist's work is characterized by a distinctive method of using the body, where the body is not presented directly, but rather a certain hint, a trace of the body, a fragment, or a detail is shown. Focusing on the idea of the imagined body, it is important for Tamara not to overwhelm the process of imagination with a concrete spectacle of the body, which distances the observer from identification. A difficult-to-define but deeply felt medium of representation, where the directly perceived body disappears but is still recognizable, is a recurring motif in the artist's works. The forms and completeness of the imagined body are created in the viewer's imagination, and the starting point for shaping the body is visual cues and inner intuition, which lead into the trajectory and narrative formed by the work. The exhibition will run until November 27. VMU Art Gallery "101" opening hours: Mon-Fri, 10:00–18:00. Illustration: Tim Kliukoit