"The Lithuaniain Flag over Čiurlionis Mountains in the Arctic"

 Lina Straigytė's photography exhibition "The Lithuaniain Flag over Čiurlionis Mountains in the Arctic".

The exhibition presents unique photographs taken by Lina Straigytė, captured despite severe cold when not only her fingers but also the shutter of the camera lens froze. Through the photographs we witness breathtaking images of the route’s multifaceted dangers: survival routines of precisely measured meals and warming food, rituals of rest, a menacing polar bear that at times seamed curious and at times predatory, blizzards, thaws, and crevasses. The final kilometers before the former polar station, a brief moment of rest, and finally – a commemorative plaque and the Lithuanian Tricolour placed over the Čiurlionis Mountains. This range was named in 1913 by a participant of the Arctic expedition artist Nikolai Pinegin, who was struck by the resemblance between a mountain emerging from the Arctic Ocean before their ship St. Foka and a recently seen painting Serenity by Čiurlionis

The exhibition is supplemented with a replica of the commemorative plaque dedicated to the Čiurlionis Mountain range, cast at the then Telšiai Institute and given as a gift by the hikers to the M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art immediately after the expedition. On the display – the hikers’ commemorative medal, stamps gathered at meteorological stations, and other items and artefacts preserved by the participants. The atmosphere of the Čiurlionis Mountains is further brought to life by a film footage shot by the expedition’s cameraman Edmundas Mulokas.

Visiting the Čiurlionis glacial dome in the remote Franz Josef Land in the Arctic Ocean was a dream cherished by Lithuanian marchers, however, before their dream could come true, they had to overcome numerous bureaucratic obstacles in the tumbling down Soviet Union. Thoroughly prepared for conditions barely endurable for humans, an eleven-member group led by Juozas Žagelis set out in April 1990, just a few weeks after the declaration of the Act of Independence of Lithuania. In the very heat of the Lithuanian Renascence and in the harsh Arctic frost, Juozas Žagelis, Romualdas Svidinskas, Audrius Peseckas, Regina Kondrotaitė, Onutė Lukošiūtė, Lina Straigytė, Edmundas Mulokas, Linas Kulakauskas, Algirdas Striūka, Arūnas Bartusevičius, and Viktoras Buzas skied about four hundred kilometers to raise the Lithuanian flag at the highest point of the Čiurlionis mountain range to commemorate the 115th anniversary of the artist’s birth.

According to the youngest member of the expedition Lina Straigytė, the expedition team was composed of the most experienced winter hikers, each of us was  required to have a fifth-category difficulty experience. With this trek we became the 1990 Lithuanian Winter Trekking Champions – it was not enthusiasm, it was sport; with any other purpose, we would never have been granted permission to enter the closed archipelago. Enthusiasts in such a trek would either have perished or gone mad.

Dr. Lina Straigytė – dendrologist, Associate Professor at Vytautas Magnus University Agriculture Academy, and participant of the expedition The Tricolour in the Arctic Ocean (April–May 1990). She studied photography under V. Dragūnas. The photographic archive of the expedition to the Čiurlionis Mountains (over 500 negatives) is the author’s donation to the M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art on the occasion of Čiurlionis’ 150th anniversary.