Artist
I am known by many names and names have influenced my patterns of creation, therefore it is not easy to introduce myself. Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa's writings helped me understand that there is no need to be fully understood...Since 2016 I go under the name Gudrita Lape or gudri-ta-lape, which could also be translated as wise-that-fox.It should come as no surprise that I work with identity, but big part of my inspiration comes from collective memory, femininity, ecology. I am inspired by the spiritual world, symbolism and rituals. The indescribable beauty of passed-on rituals led me to performance and body art and the objects from these ceremonies brought me to creating tactile works using mainly my own textile and up-cycling techniques. Just like rituals, my works contain a lot more than can be seen with bare eyes or with a camera lens, therefore I was against fully documenting my works for many years, but slowly breaking the habit by collaborating with skilled photographers.
Nomad
The multilingual brain of mine enjoys changing locations. The rest of my body isn't sure if that's the right decision. However, I was a nomad before I stepped on this earth in my current, ever-changing physical body. My first trip outside my mother's womb was to Russia and a few years later, when I had just finished the 3rd grade, to Iceland. That is the home country of my wondering soul and where I studied until I got my degree in Visual Arts in 2012. That same summer two life-changing offers appeared. I was chosen to be one of the volunteers in Jerusalem's convent in 2014 and the Leonardo Da Vinci grant gave me the chance to move to Lithuania to be an intern of the Vilnius Art Academy's vice-dean and textile artist Eglė Ganda Bogdanienė. Half a year spent in Lithuania gave me the opportunity to understand the history of my parents' motherland as well as experiment with textile art. Shortly after I was off to Tuscany, Italy where I spent 9 months as a volunteer in an elderly home learning, observing and teaching various skills such as coloring methods for elderly Parkinson's patients and inclusion of immigrant workers through art.Israel/Palestine followed with intense religious services and visual trickeries. The list goes on.Catalunya. In various cities with Roman heritage and my hope is to be a part of that positive change by doing circles of women and creating collective art.
Conscious-being
Life can be a rollercoaster, even if you don't buy the ticket to the ride. It is easy to forget what one is here for and what one wants to leave on this Earth. Art is useful as a therapy, in the sense of making art, but what about therapy through experiencing art? I am not this body but this body gives me the opportunity to create experiences for others to feel:
• understood, a part of a tribe, collective memory• connect to divine energies, feel the divinity within• get inspired, create and be a conscious-being • hear and trust one's inner voice or inner child