Zachęta – National Gallery of Art

artists: Pakui Hardware – Neringa Černiauskaitė and Ugnius Gelguda
architect responsible for exhibition space: Simona Sigita
curator: Agnieszka Pindera

Opening of the exhibition on Thursday 24 April 2025, at 7pm

Neringa Černiauskaitė and Ugnius Gelguda, known as Pakui Hardware, are an artistic duo from Lithuania, and are currently presenting their new kinetic sculptures in Warsaw. Made of steel, glass, silicone, and elastic fabric, their creations move at a steady pace, creating an impression of autonomous beings.

“With these materials, we can bring together themes that otherwise would require straightforward explanation: stainless steel is associated with medicine, silicone – with skin-like prostheses, and laboratory glassware – with scientific experiments. This is how we construct our own visual language,” Pakui Hardware explain.

The exhibition in Zachęta focuses primarily on the metaphor of the filtering membrane, as well as on biological immunity. Organisms defend themselves by telling foreign objects from their own bodies. By drawing on references to medical imaging, biology and the materiality of the body, the artists explore its limits and vulnerability to outside influence.

Since 2023, Neringa Černiauskaitė and Ugnius Gelguda have been exploring the concepts of genetics, the nervous system, and the immune system as metaphors for management – both of the individual and of society. Their previous projects, such as Burn at the carlier | gebauer gallery in Madrid, or Inflammation, presented at the Lithuanian National Museum of Art in Vilnius and then at the International Art Exhibition in Venice, focused on topics such as illness and treatment. This allowed the artists to make references to regional and global social problems such as the climate crisis, droughts or migration. They believe that the body – both the human body and the body of the planet – remembers its history through genes, molecules or shapes.

The Progi / Thresholds exhibition also enters a dialogue with the work of artists such as Zilia Sánchez Domínguez (1926–2024) or Aleksandra Kasuba (1923–2019), who explored relationships between the body, space, and materiality. The work of Pakui Hardware shows that not only does modern art explore the structure of ecosystems, but it also talks about the systems of control and supervision as well as the complex relations between the individual and society.

Pakui Hardware was established in 2014. In their work, the artists explore the plasticity of bodies and their hitherto undiscovered potential by looking closely at the process in which technologies broaden, test, and control human corporeality. The duo represented Lithuania at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (2024) with their project titled Inflammation. Their work has been shown at individual exhibitions at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead and at MUMOK – Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien in Vienna. The artists have also participated in exhibitions such as the Istanbul Biennial, the 13th Baltic Triennial in Vilnius, Biennale Gherdëina in Urtijëi in Italy, as well as exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Kunsthalle Basel, and the MAXXI in Rome.

Simona Sigita – the architect behind the exhibition; she pursues observation and analysis, reacting to problems that are rooted in the local context yet bear significance for the broader social, urbanistic and environmental issues.