AWARDS

Born in 1967 in Vilnius, Lithuania, where he currently lives and works.

VALIAUGA graduated Vilnius College of Technology and Design, specializing in photographic technology, and later earned a master’s degree in photography and media art from Vilnius Academy of Arts in 2010.

Since the lato of 1990s, VALIAUGA has consistently worked on the themes of social identity and time through his photography. Lithuanian history and the experiences during the Soviet era form the basis of his series and projects, yet his perspective avoids falling into nostalgia or sentimentality about the past. He carefully observes the contemporary environment and uses his photographs to examine what has been lost, what has changed, and why. His recent works focus on questions about Lithuanian identity in today’s Europe and the world.

The solo exhibitions, “Still Identity” was held at the National Art Museum, Vilnius, Lithuania, in 2006, the Museum of Photography in Šiauliai, Lithuania, in 2007, and at the Goethe-Institut in Rotterdam, Netherlands, in 2008. The exhibition “Between the Shores” took place at the Contemporary Art Center in Gdańsk, Poland, in 2008 and the Kaunas Photography Gallery in Kaunas, Lithuania. Another exhibition, “In Trust：Reframing Wales Histories” was showcased at the Turner House Gallery in Wales, UK in 2016.

His artworks are included in the collections of the National Museum and the MO Museum in Lithuania, the Modern Art Center, the Library of Leiden University in the Netherlands, the University of Sunderland in the UK, and the Imago Mundi Collection in Italy.

Artist Statements

I am honored to have received the Overseas Photographer Award from Higashikawa, the Town of Photography. Although Japan is far from my homeland, it is a place that feels very close to my heart.

For me, photography is a journey, an adventure, or an opportunity to experience and discover something new, and the camera is the key that can unlock the doors to a different reality – a changing reality that no longer exists. It is a way to look into the lives of others, to tame them, to experience them as if they were your own memories. In photographs, time remains as a result of the interaction between a person and their environment. This can be felt, seen, or measured by what remains in the image medium as color, a stroke of light, memory, or a sense of tomorrow.

The image creates and identifies territories of social communication and dialogue where signs of private life, time, and memory unfold. The suspended reality of photography is a document of the past, coming to life as a subjective emotional moment of experience.

Truth in photographs is not what you can see, but what you can feel as you look.

I don’t believe in the power of photography, but I do believe in people and the signs of their environment, whose images remain as photographs. I feel part of it all.

The context that the image reveals become more important than the image.

Arturas VALIAUGA