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Sailing Stones March 31 - October 31 2015 – Egidija Čiricaitė's About Stones: Crossing

The Pennsylvanian Folder, the artist's book Ciricaite first made in connection with the Street Road Rocks project.
Around the world, societies can be found in which rocks are recognised and celebrated as extraordinary, as embodiments of some thing or idea beyond the stone of which they are made. – Carolyn J Dean
Part of the Sailing Stones exhibition at Street Road, Egidija Ciricaite's About Stones explores ideas of memory and belonging, inviting us to question notions of truth and authenticity as part of one’s defining identity in their relationship with ancestral land. 

The work is inspired by the system of myths surrounding material relationships between an immigrant and his homeland, especially the connections between the soil and the stones from an ancestral place and feelings of belonging, identity and nostalgia in migrant communities.

About Stones at Street Road features a video installation and extracts from The Pennsylvanian Folder, the artist's book Ciricaite first made in connection with the Street Road Rocks project.

A video installation, About Stones: Crossing, presents a metaphysical passage from an ancestral land into a new place of residence. The installation reflects on the role of home soil as an umbilical cord that roots identity: a long line of stones emerges from Pennsylvanian soil and continues across the walls and buildings into the projected world of beyond. The projection evokes the soft-focused realm of uncertainty in the new habitat, which is contrasted with the physical materiality of the stone line marking the ground. 

The Pennsylvanian folder “About Stones” contains a selection of documents as an introduction to the concept, the process and the verse of growing stones. The folio includes a pseudo-academic introduction, a slide-show, a visual poem and a manual, all of which reflect on the possibility of intentional cultivation of stones to relieve the symtoms of acculturative stress among diaspora.

While the work relies on a factual evidence from a number of significant studies in medicine, geology, archeology and anthropology, it draws no lines between truth and fiction; it is the approach that mirrors the processes in dislocated communities, where longing produces new social imaginaries from merged true and false discourse fragments they had left behind.

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During this period of social distancing Street Road is offering one-on-one Skype tours of our exhibitions. Just message 610-869-4712 or email us to set one up. Our Little Free Library's outdoor box is open 24/7 and regularly restocked.

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A word about 'here':
We acknowledge that we are on the ancestral lands of the Lenape, original people of the mid-Atlantic area, forced west by British and US governments. Most Delaware Indian tribe descendents are now located in Oklaholma, Wisconsin, and Ontario. Lenni Lenapes in Pennsylvania are not officially recognized as tribes by the United States, though an estimated 5000 Lenape Nation descendents live in the Delaware River area. We pay respects to the Lenape people both past and present. Please consider the many legacies of violence, displacement and settlement that form part of our collective histories. While increased public recognition of these legacies and processes of redress such as Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission are positive steps, concrete focus on return of land and land rights remains a distant horizon.
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