AMSTERDAM.- Young Lithuanian artist Monika Bielskyte presents the first part of A Place to Wash the Heart at Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam beginning 12 December 2008.

A Place to Wash the Heart is an ongoing project which is shown here in Foam for the first time in a series of projections.

In recent years, Bielskyte has travelled around the East, including Cambodia, China, Vietnam and Laos, inspired by the fusion of Eastern and Western philosophy, literature and culture. These are countries with a turbulent past, and a present marked by momentous historical events. Bielskyte looks for a new dimension to this burden of history: the private, individual history of the people who live there. She explores how they relate to the world around them. Her dark, often mysterious images show us a world in which dreams become real, and reality a dream. Intimate personal stories become part of history, and merge to form something completely new. These are not artificial images, and Bielskyte is not showing the world any differently to the way it is. Her photos depict cruel and horrific scenes couched in beauty and simplicity. Dark and disturbing, yet above all honest and authentic.

For this show at Foam, Bielskyte developed an installation featuring projections with text. The texts include poetry, lyrics and personal dialogue inspired by her direct surroundings.

Monika Bielskyte (b. 1986, Lithuania) lived in Vilnius until 2005. Later, she moved to Paris, where she studied a couple of months film directing, but she is basically autodidact. Bielskyte has exhibited at the Nuits Blanche in Paris, October 2008, in collaboration with the Arles Photo Festival, she has shown images from the APTWTH project during the European night in Rencontres d’Arles, July 2008, in Three Shadows Photography Art Centre Beijing, June 2008, Critic Choice / curated by by Rebecca Wilson Saatchi Gallery in Royal Academy of Arts London 2007.In late 2008 she will publish ‘Times Immemorial Project’.