Coffee Tablecloth

In the performance / object Coffee Tablecloth I use dried coffee grounds. I try to highlight the beauty of oriental textile patterns and underline the importance of ritual. The idea was born while I was running the Café at Contemporary Art Center Vilnius and was observing the local artistic environment, artists and their discussions in the search of essence of art with the cup of coffee at day time and with the glass of wine at night. I collected the coffee grounds after being used, as in my understanding thus, they were containing the memory, and strewed them according to the beautiful traditional Kashmir patterns. Coffee Tablecloth is a harmonious object made from the material cumulated in non-harmonious, sometimes even conflict environment. On the one hand I lean on the textile tradition, where ornaments are playing an important role, and on the other hand I use the phenomena of such a social ritual as drinking coffee with friends and colleagues when drinking is less important than how and by whom it was drunk.. The artwork the kind of contemporary Buddhist Mandala should provoke to think about beauty, truth, love, temporality, fragility and tolerance.

Performance was presented in Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius; Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris; X International Lodz trienniel (Poland); Center for Art and Culture, Gent (Belgium); Galerie im Kornerpark, Berlin.