Potatoes and Chamomile

Emalin is pleased to present 'Potatoes and Chamomile', a solo exhibition of new works by Lithuanian artist Augustas Serapinas (b. 1990). This is the artist's fourth exhibition with the gallery.

Serapinas’ practice pivots on the paradox of cultivation through destruction and on the social conditions that render such destruction ordinary. In post-socialist Lithuania, rural depopulation, land privatisation and speculative development have accelerated the disappearance of vernacular architecture—modest, often self-built houses shaped by local needs and materials. These structures are frequently abandoned, sold off as fire wood or burned to clear land. Fire, in this context, functions both as expedient and as erasure: removing not only the material residue of prior inhabitation, but the spatial logic of another way of life.

Serapinas intervenes in the afterlife of these forms. These architectural elements are treated as parts in flux: moved, altered and reassembled into new configurations. Fire, often used to erase these structures, becomes in the artist’s hands a tool of transformation—its residue folded back into the logic of growth.