Exhibition view: Rugile Barzdziukaite, Vaiva Grainyte, Lina Lapelyte, Sun Sea (Marina), Opera-performance, Lithuania Pavilion, Magazzino No. 42, Marina Militare, Arsenale di Venezia, Fondamenta Case Nuove 2738, The 58th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia 'May You Live in Interesting Times' (11 May–24 November 2019). © Andrej Vasilenko. — Exhibition view: Rugile Barzdziukaite, Vaiva Grainyte, Lina Lapelyte, *Sun Sea (Marina)*, Opera-performance, Lithuania Pavilion, Magazzino No. 42, Marina Militare, Arsenale di Venezia, Fondamenta Case Nuove 2738, The 58th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia 'May You Live in Interesting Times' (11 May–24 November 2019). © Andrej Vasilenko.

One image by Nina Strand:

There’s no way back now. Everything is dark around us. I’m not scared – of course I’m not scared – but wait, what was that? It’s just that it’s the middle of the night and we’re walking on the subway tracks underneath the streets of Oslo to find an art exhibition of my friend. The subways stop running at midnight. But do they really? Are we safe? Am I a coward to make my date walk in front of me? We both jump when something moves close to our feet. Of course, rats live down here. We’re entering their territory. Voluntarily! I’ve promised him a great performance - I can feel his restlessness and wonder if we should just walk back to where we went down and go on a more normal date. But I know I’ll have FOMO forever if I don’t see it, so I keep going.

This brings back the memory of traversing Venice on my final day at the Biennale in 2019 to find the Lithuanian pavilion for an apparently unmissable opera performance, Sun and Sea (Marina). It took me forever to find the hall, and there was a long queue outside. In my eagerness to get in, I accidentally stepped on the feet of curator Hans Ulrich Obrist. Only few people could be admitted at one time, and I was quick to take a photo of the installation before the rest of the group arrived up the small staircase. In hindsight I feel silly for taking out my cellphone – as if nothing exists without me documenting it. I just wanted to have an image without people in it. I did wonder if putting my phone immediately between myself and the work diminished my experience of it. I’m also ashamed to admit that I was too busy observing Obrist’s reaction to the opera, which was set on a stage resembling a crowded beach, to focus on it as closely as I should. But I ended up writing about the work after an interview with the curators. They deserved the coverage, and I filled in the gaps through research.

I still go and see everything I can. It’s never enough. The more I see, the more I want. And after the lockdowns, I want even more. That’s why we’re walking in the dark underneath Oslo. There are so many shows to see. So many pop-up galleries, artist-driven initiatives, all kinds of exhibitions with complicated structures that have taken years to develop but which get absolutely no press coverage. So many launches of books printed on special paper with fold-out posters. So many publications that are never reviewed. I wonder, if they’re never mentioned, do they exist? Is it worth it, all these shows and projects disappearing into darkness?

Every Norwegian newspaper is downscaling, only writing about exhibitions from the larger institutions that ‘everyone’ knows, not the small, often more interesting ones from less established artists. There are newspapers that have axed their art sections. So we begin promoting each other’s shows, in solidarity. We write long posts on social media. We send in commentaries to the papers in the absence of reviews, hiding in plain sight the information on the artwork we want to highlight. It becomes a kind of activism, something I laugh about while enviously eyeing all the journalists at press previews in Berlin, Paris, London, wondering which organisations they’re writing for. Do they really have that many papers and art journals? It feels as if visual art is more esteemed there than here. It’s a structural fail: schools have too little art education, artists are viewed as peculiar. Our Queen even pointed this out in an interview for Norwegian TV about her new gallery. There’s way too little arts coverage, she sternly announced. We hope for more. Norway has the highest amount of funding and grants for artists, but seemingly the lowest coverage. It doesn’t add up.

We never make it to the performance. We see a tiny staircase and my date looks expectantly at me. We’ve been walking aimlessly for an hour. We decide to get out to enjoy a warm bar and some wine. I later learn that my friend got absolutely no coverage for this project that had been three years in the making. This is all I can give her: a feeble attempt to say something about the shows that go by unnoticed. So, this is it. My walk in the dark.