Indrė Urbonaitė :
Don’t Speak Loudly – It’s Harmful for Butterflies

Indrė Urbonaitė (Kaunas, Lithuania, 1986) currently lives and works in the Netherlands. After completing her marketing studies in Lithuania, she continued to develop her practice at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, where she finished her Bachelor of Arts with a major in Photography. Urbonaite’s work has been exhibited in group shows in the Netherlands, Switzerland, France and Latvia. Her project State of Shame was nominated for the 2018 Award ‘Seeking the Latest in Photography’ at the Riga Photography Biennial and the book, which was part of this project, received an honorable mention at ‘Luma Rencontres Dummy Book Award Arles 2018’.
Don’t Speak Loudly – It’s Harmful for Butterflies is an exploration of disappointments as the result of ongoing conflict between expectations and reality – a conflict that often occurs in relation to our growing need to consume nature by the means of tourism. Going on vacation is a crucial element of modern society. Not only is it a marker of status but it also fulfills the desire to consume the image of the place rather than the place itself. The project invites the viewer to take a short vacation to a place that is so familiar yet doesn’t exist. What constitutes a ‘good view’? How blue is the water? What is the definition of a beach? A generic holiday place is constructed out of online stock video clips filmed with a phone from the computer screen. The handheld movement, reflections, autofocus and glitch merge with the image bank’s conventional landscape aesthetics, morphing into new abstractions. The voice-over guides the viewer along the disappointing hiking trail, with the goal of finding the butterflies as a metaphor for the beautiful scenery. The narrative is inspired and written out of a collection of negative online reviews from various ‘must-see’ places. The continuously looping videos together with the narrative reveal man’s never-ending desire to discover nature’s utopian beauty.
Indrė Urbonaitė (Kaunas, Lithuania, 1986) currently lives and works in the Netherlands. After completing her marketing studies in Lithuania, she continued to develop her practice at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, where she finished her Bachelor of Arts with a major in Photography. Urbonaite’s work has been exhibited in group shows in the Netherlands, Switzerland, France and Latvia. Her project State of Shame was nominated for the 2018 Award ‘Seeking the Latest in Photography’ at the Riga Photography Biennial and the book, which was part of this project, received an honorable mention at ‘Luma Rencontres Dummy Book Award Arles 2018’.
‘Don’t Speak Loudly – It’s Harmful for Butterflies’ is an exploration of disappointments as the result of ongoing conflict between expectations and reality – a conflict that often occurs in relation to our growing need to consume nature by the means of tourism. Going on vacation is a crucial element of modern society. Not only is it a marker of status but it also fulfills the desire to consume the image of the place rather than the place itself. The project invites the viewer to take a short vacation to a place that is so familiar yet doesn’t exist. What constitutes a ‘good view’? How blue is the water? What is the definition of a beach? A generic holiday place is constructed out of online stock video clips filmed with a phone from the computer screen. The handheld movement, reflections, autofocus and glitch merge with the image bank’s conventional landscape aesthetics, morphing into new abstractions. The voice-over guides the viewer along the disappointing hiking trail, with the goal of finding the butterflies as a metaphor for the beautiful scenery. The narrative is inspired and written out of a collection of negative online reviews from various “must-see” places. The continuously looping videos together with the narrative reveal man’s never-ending desire to discover nature’s utopian beauty.