PerformanceJuly 18, 2021
“Sun & Sea,” which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2019, will make its U.S. premiere this fall.
More than two years after it premiered, Sun & Sea, which was shown in the Lithuanian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale where it won the Golden Lion for best national participation featuring performers arranged around a recreated beach, will make its U.S. debut.
For two weeks this September, Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė, and Lina Lapelytė’s Sun & Sea will be shown at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York. After that, it will travel to Arcadia Exhibitions in Philadelphia, the Momentary in Bentonville, Arkansas, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, in collaboration with the Hammer Museum and the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA.
For the work, 25 tons of sand are spread around a space where people can watch from a 360-degree balcony. A range of 13 singers and 25 performers—some of them professionals, some of them not—play sunbathers that sing, alluding to the climate crisis and the destruction of the planet.
Although Sun & Sea‘s U.S. debut had long being waited, it had not been announced until now. It has previously made stops in Norway, Switzerland, Germany, and Denmark.
“Within a single hour of dangerously gentle melodies, it manages to animate a panoramic cast of characters whose stories coalesce into a portrait of an apocalyptic climate crisis that goes down as easily as a trip to the beach,” Joshua Barone wrote in a review for the New York Times, in 2019.
For two weeks this September, Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė, and Lina Lapelytė’s Sun & Sea will be shown at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York. After that, it will travel to Arcadia Exhibitions in Philadelphia, the Momentary in Bentonville, Arkansas, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, in collaboration with the Hammer Museum and the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA.
For the work, 25 tons of sand are spread around a space where people can watch from a 360-degree balcony. A range of 13 singers and 25 performers—some of them professionals, some of them not—play sunbathers that sing, alluding to the climate crisis and the destruction of the planet.
Although Sun & Sea‘s U.S. debut had long being waited, it had not been announced until now. It has previously made stops in Norway, Switzerland, Germany, and Denmark.
“Within a single hour of dangerously gentle melodies, it manages to animate a panoramic cast of characters whose stories coalesce into a portrait of an apocalyptic climate crisis that goes down as easily as a trip to the beach,” Joshua Barone wrote in a review for the New York Times, in 2019.
