Kaunas Photo Exhibition-Hillerbrand and Magsamen Mandala Project

Kaunas, second largest city of Lithuania had a photo exhibition, called Kaunas Photo Festival. This annual event is being held since 2004 and is longest running photo exhibition in the baltic region. I got to witness a part of their 2015 edition- I have written about "The Kaunas we lost" in this earlier post.

Current post is about Mandala series. At first look, these pics, exhibited outdoor near the base of Zaliakalnis funicular in Kaunas were very confusing. You can see that lots of objects are kept in a circular fashion. To understand their meaning and purpose, one should read the event website http://2015.kaunasphoto.com/en/project/hillerbrand-magsamen/ 

Below is a brief about the Mandala project from its US based Artists Hillerbrand and Magsamen's website. Apparently term Mandala is derived from Buddhism.

A Mandala is defined as a circular design of the universe and also as a symbol expressing a person’s striving for unity of the self. In an effort to heal our home and family after a death, we have created a series of large photographs of Mandalas where we have organized the stuff from our home such as Barbies, Legos, books and all those crazy little plastic items into circular patterns.
Our previous work was about our accumulation of stuff in our home – everything from toys to lawnmowers. We cut holes in our walls, climbed up piles of stuff and surrounded ourselves in our mass of stuff. We are now taking that chaos and creating order through a series of Mandalas.

If the description goes over your head, just enjoy the photos. Essentially these are circular patterns created from everyday items with an intention to bring in a conversation about family dynamics, consumerism and so on...

Other Kaunas Attractions: Castle * Balloon Ride * BMW Fans * Aviation  Museum * Devil's Museum *