Lina Lapelytė (Lithuania)
Study of Slope
A “moving, wistful, and immersive installation” (The New York Times).
The New York Times critics pick makes its US premiere at PS21. A durational musical performance by Lithuanian interdisciplinary artist Lina Lapelytė (winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale 2019), Study of Slope is a performance-installation featuring a choir of self-identified non-musicians.
By centering those without a “musical ear,” the work challenges the dominant codes of Western musical tradition that typically exclude off-key voices. These often-silenced voices resonate around the PS21 grounds, singing and moving continuously throughout the afternoon in a looping performance.
Set within a landscape of nettles—plants often dismissed as weeds despite their healing properties—the work symbolically disrupts normative categorizations. The text sung by the performers is drawn from Sean Ashton’s Living in a Land, a fictional memoir where the narrator recounts only what he has never done or will never do. This exploration of absence invites reflection on identity, experience, and the individual’s place within a community.
Starting with the voice, Study of Slope reimagines how we define musicality, expression, and belonging. It celebrates polyphony and personal difference while questioning how a truly collective voice might be formed. Since its debut in France, the work has continued to resonate in new contexts, inviting audiences elsewhere into its evolving sonic landscape. This marks the first time the piece will be performed in the United States.
GROUNDTONE is PS21’s new, three-day weekend of immersive concerts and adventurous music.
A sonic exploration of PS21’s untamed natural landscape, the festival invites listeners to experience dazzling performances and site-specific creations by visionary, genre-defying artists in settings across our grounds.
Part of Upstate Art Weekend, each day will include free performances, workshops, open rehearsals, and community music making open to all. Highlights include Lina Lapelytė’s immersive installation Study of Slope and ticketed concerts each evening.
Lina Lapelytė (based in Vilnius, LT and London, UK) is an artist working across performance, sound, and installation. Her practice, rooted in musical composition, critically explores pop culture, gender norms, and collective memory. Using both trained and untrained performers, Lapelytė investigates vocal expression through popular music and opera, turning singing into a shared, affective experience that challenges dominant cultural narratives and systems of silencing.
Lapelytė gained international recognition through her collaboration with Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė and Vaiva Grainytė. Their opera Have a Good Day! has toured extensively, translated into nine languages, and received multiple awards. Their follow-up, Sun and Sea (Marina), won the Golden Lion for Best National Participation at the 2019 Venice Biennale of Art.
Her solo works often center on inclusivity and unconventional voices. Study of Slope (also known as The Mutes), first presented at Lafayette Anticipations in Paris, features a choir of self-identified non-musicians, challenging classical traditions that exclude off-key voices. The Speech, co-commissioned by La Biennale de Lyon and Kaunas Biennial for the Lithuanian Season in France (2024), explores the breakdown of verbal language and our disconnection from the natural world, amplifying voices of children and animals.
In recent years, Lapelytė has created large-scale, site-specific performances that engage with ecological and social themes, often using water as both medium and metaphor. Works like Currents/Instructions for the Woodcutters (2020) and What Happens With a Dead Fish? (2021) exemplify this shift.
Lapelytė’s work has been presented internationally at institutions and festivals such as Festival d’Automne/Bourse de Commerce, Paris (2024); Public Art Munich (2024); Wiener Festwochen (2023); FRAC Nantes (2022); SPACE London (2022); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2021); MOCA Los Angeles (2021); BAM New York (2021); Tai Kwun, Hong Kong (2021); Riga Biennial (2020); Cartier Foundation, Paris (2019); and the Venice Biennale (2016, 2019), among many others.
