In front of Matière noire, I feel a profound love for black. Black not as absence, but as the ultimate concentration, a space of memory and vertigo. Martin Désilets’ work moves me through its silent rigor and the humility with which he embraces the vastness of art history only to dissolve it. Each state of the work is a slow breath, an invitation to slow down, to see differently, to accept that beauty can brush against disappearance. I deeply admire this patient, almost meditative approach, which transforms the saturation of images into a dense, sensitive, and infinitely poetic material. Matière noire is not merely an exhibition: it is an experience of time, of vision, and of finitude, carried with a rare precision and depth.

After nearly twenty years of curatorial practice, I found myself in a singular position: curating the exhibition of my mother, the painter Lidija Dailidėnienė. This situation—both evident and deeply unsettling—forced me to reconsider concepts I had long assumed to be stable: professional objectivity, critical distance, and the legitimacy of the curatorial gaze. Can one be a curator “like any other” when sharing with the artist an intimate history, a family memory, a common emotional landscape? And conversely, can one truly claim absolute neutrality toward any work of art?

“Topography of the Inner Nature” reflects the essence of the artist’s creation: just as topography on a map indicates the relief and structure of a landscape, Lidija Dailidėnienė “maps” on her canvases inner experiences, emotions, and the connection with nature. This metaphor allows each painting to be perceived as a spatial and contemplative journey through inner states. Lidija Dailidėnienė’s painting creates a space of silence and light, where natural motifs transform into subtle reflections of inner states. On her canvases, delicate touches seem to float in the air, accompanied by a carefully harmonized color palette, giving the landscapes a peaceful and meditative character. Each painting becomes a true visual pause — during which the reeds seem to rustle on the canvas, the wind whistles through the branches, and the water of the lake gently ripples.

The pertinence of Seph Rodney’s curatorial choice for Barbara Navi’s first solo exhibition at Galerie RX&SLAG Paris deserves recognition. By granting full freedom to such a finely attuned eye, the gallery has enabled an oeuvre to unfold in all its complexity—one that reveals its depth most fully when accompanied by a thought capable of grasping its intimate tensions. Rodney, with the sensitivity of both critic and essayist, highlights not only the aesthetic stakes of Navi’s work but also brings forth its existential dimension: a painting practice that questions our ways of inhabiting time, memory, and reality. He sums up this direction by evoking the desire to create “a fracture in ordinary time,” an opening through which images become thresholds rather than certainties.

On the international scene, Roméo Mivekannin asserts an increasingly prominent presence through projects that demonstrate the universal scope of his approach. His exhibitions have taken him to Africa, Europe, and even Madagascar, where he created monumental installations combining textile, metal, and iconography drawn from colonial archives. In Italy, he presented a series of velvet paintings that revisit the European pictorial tradition by confronting it with the spiritual heritages of the Gulf of Benin. In France, his work has entered major museum institutions, where his ritual fabrics enter into dialogue with the Western canon, revealing the invisible narratives that run through it. His participation in biennials and international exhibitions confirms the growing interest in a body of work that, while rooted in personal and spiritual memory, questions global constructions of the gaze and the shared histories between continents.

In recent months, Kaupinis’s name has also appeared in the wider discussions around cultural policy. As Lithuania’s cultural community gathered to form the Cultural Assembly—an initiative opposing the decision to hand the Ministry of Culture to the political party Nemuno aušra—Kaupinis emerged as one of the movement’s clearest voices. For him, culture is not a privilege or ornament, but a foundation of democratic life, a space where a society’s conscience and historical awareness are shaped. That is why the question of who steers cultural policy, and by what values, has become not merely political but existential.
This conversation is about creative responsibility and civic courage—about what it means to defend culture when it becomes a battleground for political interests.