Before arriving, Dave Beleckis and his wife Joan didn’t know what to expect from their visit as they walked into the Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture lobby at 6500 S. Pulaski Road.
“We are very artsy sort of people,” Beleckis said. “I’m Lithuanian so I was cheering them on internally.”
The museum’s latest exhibit, “beLONGING: Lithuanian Artists in Chicago, 1900 to Now,” explores how Lithuanian immigrants built new lives in Chicago while coping with past trauma, said guest curator and consultant Victoria Kasubaite Matranga, a Chicagoan of Lithuanian descent.
“The ‘be’ signifies the ‘being’ immigrants experience when adjusting to a new country and culture,” Matranga said. “‘LONGING’ reflects what they left behind—people, places, and traditions now confined to memory.”
Covering 125 years, some of the artworks featured in “beLONGING” are expressions of some artists who experienced powerful oppression, misinformation, brutal treatment and death at the hands of the German Reich and Soviet Union during WWI and WWII, causing them to flee Lithuania. Other U.S. born artists created artwork based on other experiences.
The exhibition showcases nearly 115 works from 30 artists. It examines the causes and effects of Lithuanian immigration to Chicago from 1918 to 1991—parallels that sometimes resonate with current U.S. immigration and deportation issues.
The exhibit includes paintings, drawings, sculpture, textiles, print media, and photography, divided into six sections: “Changing Chicago,” “Art as Activism,” “Mythic Feminism: Lithuanian Women Artists,” “Sacral Art,” “Designed in Chicago,” and the culminating “beLONGING” section.
Immigration waves
“It’s estimated that between 700,000 and 1 million Lithuanians immigrated to America between 1880 and 1920 during the first wave,” Matranga said.
Seeking economic opportunity and political refuge, many settled in Bridgeport and Marquette Park, according to the Encyclopedia of Chicago.
A second wave followed World War II, when Lithuania, after an early period of independence, was forcibly absorbed into the Soviet Union in 1944. Many Lithuanians fled to avoid Soviet rule, which imposed labor camps, imprisonment, and persecution, according to Global True Lithuania, Encyclopedia of Lithuanian Heritage Worldwide.
Matranga said the exhibit highlights how Lithuanian creativity has been essential to survival.
Connection to identity
Lithuania was the last European country to adopt Christianity, replacing its indigenous belief system, Romuva, in the mid-1500s. A matriarchal spiritual tradition, Romuva connected Lithuanians to nature and celestial deities. Practitioners faced persecution under Russian rule in the 19th and 20th centuries and were often deported across Russia or imprisoned in forced labor camps, according to Euro News.
This deep bond with nature is evident in artist Monica Plioplyte’s piece, “I For Nested Pattern.”
Plioplyte, who immigrated to the U.S. as a teenager, earned an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
“The idea emerged during the COVID-19 lockdown,” she said. “I was thinking about how to integrate wall-hanging textiles into performance art. One night, I dreamt I was in a bright yellow field, wearing a paper textile that transformed into a mythological shield.”
“I started to document myself in these photo-based performances in natural environments that resembled the flat plains of my homeland, Lithuania, which carried the sentimental longing for a place or a past,” Plioplyte said.
Her work, based on artistic narratives about past reflections, information communication, gender and states of flux relating to her immigrant experience, was motivated by Baltic folklore.
Abstracted symbols rooted in nature, her own body and human DNA, the building blocks of human life are the basis for her exploration of the meaning of human life and our deep connection to the earth, she said.
“Any two human beings are 99% identical—it’s that 1% that makes us unique,” Plioplyte said. “I named my piece ‘I For Nested Pattern’ because a nested pattern is a pattern within a pattern. Through this interplay, I forge a link between past and present, self and collective.”
History of resilience
Lithuanians endured systemic brutality dating back to 1795, when the Russian Empire imposed a feudal system that enslaved entire families. Speaking and writing in Lithuanian were banned, said Matranga.
“Despite this, a strong connection to the land remained,” she added. “Love of the land and nature’s rhythms are deeply embedded in the Lithuanian soul. What we see in the art reflects this.”
From 1944 to 1991, Lithuania faced multiple invasions and occupations. Those who resisted Soviet rule faced imprisonment, forced labor, or death, said Gulag Online.
Lithuania briefly gained independence from Czarist Russia in 1918 to 1940, only to be occupied by Nazi Germany in 1941. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) retook the country in 1944, absorbing it into the Soviet Union along with 14 other nations, said Matranga.
When Lithuania declared independence in March 1990, pro-Soviet crowds attempted to overthrow the country’s newly elected, lawful government by attacking the country’s Supreme Council buildings on Jan. 8, 1991. Council members and state border patrols repelled the attack, according to the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania.
When Lithuania declared independence in March 1990, Soviet forces attempted to crush the movement, culminating in a violent crackdown on Jan. 11, 1991. 14 unarmed Lithuanians were killed, but the nation defended its sovereignty.
Chicago’s Lithuanian community rallied in support and by Sept. 1991, Lithuania’s independence was recognized globally.
Dive into history
Curator Vicki Matranga said there are lots of things to see at the Balzekas Museum.
“You can take a deep dive into medieval history, learn about the amber road of commerce during the time of the Roman empire to the present day and we have beautiful folk art collections containing weavings, textiles, easter eggs and knight’s armor,” she noted.
Several works stood out to Beleckis and wife Joan. Both Monika Plioplyte’s “I For Nested Pattern’s” layered depths of meaning and Adolphas Valeskas’ colored glass mural depicting Lithuania’s pagan past, “Daughters of the Sun,” were favorites. Beleckis was also partial to Petras Aleksa’s sculpture “The Leader”, a piece that represents authoritarianism.
“To me the exhibit was uniformly excellent,” he said. “I was pleasantly surprised by how thorough a snapshot of Lithuanian culture and country [the museum] affords anybody who visits the exhibit.”
The Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture’s “beLONGING” exhibition runs through May 17, 2025.
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