8th International Painting Biennial – “Painful Events as Part of Everyday Life”

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Curator of the exhibition: Tomas Lagūnavičius.

​This is an international painting biennial exploring how painful events become an inseparable part of our everyday life. In the contemporary world, wars, conflicts, losses, and constant tension permeate the information space so frequently that we learn to adapt to them. What once would have been shocking today often passes by almost unnoticed — like background noise accompanying daily work and routine.

The biennial invites artists to explore this dangerous mechanism of habituation: how pain becomes normalized, how visual and emotional shocks lose their sharpness, and how the human psyche creates protective layers that allow survival while simultaneously dulling sensitivity. Here, painting becomes a way to freeze a moment, to force the viewer to look closely at what they usually turn away from, and to rethink their relationship with ongoing global processes.

This biennial aims not only to document traces of painful events but also to raise the question: Is the ability to adapt to pain our strength, or a dangerous cost of humanity?

Exhibition dates: from March 31, 2026  to April 14, 2026.

List of participants of this biennial:

Aiste Bartuškaite

Alexander Jazykov

Darija Stipanic

Elchin Mustafayev

Hippo Artz

Jésica Frustaci

Karolina Marušić

Rashedul Huda

Stella Mimikou

Tomas Lagūnavičius

Uğur Karabulut

Ūla Pleskevičiūtė

Uliana Novak

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