One of my favorite things about art in general is its ability to reframe the utterly mundane aspects of life in a way that enables us to find beauty where we least expect it. I bet if I asked you to name something beautiful, “Lithuanian garage doors” wouldn’t be first on your list. But Agne Gintalaite saw something in these often ignored structures and created the Beauty Remains project.
In her own words:
I have always been attracted by a peculiar phenomenon of late socialism, large garage areas, called ‘garage towns’ in Lithuanian. Spanning extensive areas, these garages were part of the social fabric…Clearly, such garages were not just a matter of convenience, but rather homes for cars, which in turn were not so much a means of transport, but rather mechanical pets, that required time, attention and an array of extraordinary tools to fix them.
By documenting these objects that are, most likely, about to disappear from Lithuanian society, I wished to communicate to the viewer the ambivalent, aesthetic, but also human significance of these garage doors.
Beautifully [painted], these doors do not need be explained to the beholder. It is the fascinating play of colour and texture that I attempted to capture with my camera.
But in doing that I found myself documenting human dignity: the dignity of the garage owners, elderly, definitely not rich people, who, by sticking to their property, garages, literally maintain their ground in an urban landscape on which big businesses increasingly make claim.
SheWalksSoftly 