After their artificial beach (Golden Lion) at the Art Biennale 2019 , the three Lithuanian artists now turn to the stage of the Biennale Teatro with a new experiment in social critique mixed with everyday life.
Minimalist set design, cold lighting, and a sober yet highly evocative musical backdrop, Have a Good Day! by Vaiva Grainytė, Lina Lapelytė and Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė is set in an anonymous supermarket where ten cashiers sing their intimate thoughts and personal stories. Together, they represent the microcosm of a society that often goes unnoticed and that, during the 60-minute performance (roughly the time one might spend at a supermarket), transforms into a symphony of lives both ordinary and extraordinary. The audience listens to fragments of dreams, worries, and desires as the beeps of barcode scanners dot the rhythm of routine. At the 2019 Venice Biennale, with Sun & Sea (Marina), the three artists won the Golden Lion for Best National Participation, transforming the Lithuanian Pavilion into a beach where a group of vacationer-performers sang in turn a litany of concerns, from banal tips on preventing sunburn to anxiety about looming natural disasters. Their reflection focuses, now as then, on themes such as job insecurity, alienation, the search for meaning in monotonous routines, and contemporary concepts of leisure, highlighting the value of the individual in a society dominated by consumption and productivity.
