ONOS

The first collaboration between choreographers Agnija Šeiko and Lina Puodžiukaitė-Lanauskienė explores untold women’s history in Lithuania and reexamines the foundations of postcolonial identity.

During the Soviet era in Lithuania, manor culture and heritage were systematically dismantled, while noble families often faced tragic destinies. The noblewomen of the manor were not only responsible for managing the estate and its operations—they also cared for the community it held, attending to each of its members. The stories of most of these women were unspoken—or deliberately obscured. This silencing has deeply shaped a national identity forged under colonial rule, one that denied a rich and complex European legacy.

Starting with the stories of Lithuanian manors and the women who once sustained community life within them, the artists investigate how these figures shaped social and cultural belonging that later was lost.

Architecture becomes a vital thread in the research. Traditionally understood as a practice of designing environments to meet human and societal needs in nature, architecture here is reframed. Manor buildings, once spaces of community, now stand as mute witnesses to history suppressed under Soviet ideology.

Šeiko and Puodžiukaitė-Lanauskienė expand the notion further, approaching the human body itself as an architectural form, one that reflects not only human creation, but the very structures of being.