In Violeta Bubelytė’s work the self-image becomes a stage — the body no longer simply shows, but enacts. The frame is not aimed merely at self-portraiture, but at self-performance: the photographer becomes actor of her own subjectivity. Nudity is not exhibitionism, but a device for stripping away another kind of performative tools; the mirror repeats the subject, doubles it, fractures it. In this sense the self of the image is not quite the “authentic self” of the person: it is a character inhabiting the body, and alongside that - the body inhabiting the photograph. The series titled “Apraudojimas” (“mourning” or “lamentation”) suggests a lapse in the performance: perhaps a moment of pause, a reckoning, a letting-go, a coming to terms with, and - grieving, with the hope of deep looming relief. Violeta Bubelytė (b. 1956, Audronys, Rokiškis district) is one of the most significant figures in Lithuanian photography, beginning her distinctive artistic path in the 1980s when she studied privately with Julius Vaicekauskas and began to systematically explore self‑portraiture and the representation of the nude body. Her early series – With a Mirror (1982), Self‑Portrait (1983–1994), and Nude (1981–2003) – laid the foundation for her visual language. By consistently deconstructing the power of the gaze and cultural clichés surrounding the female body, Bubelytė established herself as one of Lithuania’s leading figures in feminist and conceptual photography. In 2023, she was awarded the Lithuanian National Culture and Arts Prize, recognizing her long-term contribution and significance in the history of contemporary photography. Her works were shown very widely: in in 2013, Violeta Bubelytė’s “Self‑Portraits” exhibition opened at the Romanticism Museum in Madrid as part of the PHotoEspaña festival. Her works were shown at the duo show "Itsekuva' together with Henry Wuorila-Stenberg at Kohta gallery in Helsinki in 2023, and she was featured in the exhibition “The Forms of Things, The Forms of Skulls, Forms of Love”, held at the Grand Palais during Paris Photo in 2024.

Artist Name

Violeta Bubelytė

Ships From

Vilnius