Opening of Gretė Labanauskaitė’s experiential exhibition “SENSATIONS”
On Friday 24 April at 17.30, Gretė Labanauskaitė’s experiential exhibition “SENSATIONS” opens at the Exhibition Hall of the Klaipėda Culture Communication Centre (KCCC), Didžioji Vandens g. 2. Can fashion be perceived solely in the form of touch, sound or smell? Is sight really the only way to understand an image? These are the questions raised by the designer G. Labanauskaitė, who invites us to rethink the usual relationship between a garment and the perception of fashion. The exhibition runs until 7 June.
What happens to fashion when it is no longer looked at? When the eye loses its privilege and the body assumes the right to perceive?
Sensations is a space in which fashion refuses to remain an image. In this exhibition, the garment is not a finished object. It is not “shown.” It is not “displayed.” Instead, it questions the hegemony of vision and proposes an experience that begins in the viewer’s body — through movement, touch, breathing, through the act of relating.
At times, sight is only one of many possibilities. At other times, it becomes an obstacle. Here, perception is no longer organised around what is seen. The body becomes the primary point of orientation: it measures distance not with the eyes, but with skin, movement, and breath. The garment does not separate from the body, just as experience cannot be separated from the one who lives it. Without touch, it remains incomplete. Without movement, it is mute. Without presence, it does not exist.
Sensations brings together the experiences of sighted and blind participants not to equalise them, but to allow them to overlap. What appears as an image to one may unfold as texture to another. Form can become sound. Silence can become surface. Scent can become memory. The senses are not hierarchised, but interwoven into a multilayered experience in which perception occurs not at a distance, but through proximity.
In moments of touch, movement, sound, or scent, the works transform from outcomes into events. This is not a static exhibition, but a continuously evolving process. Each visitor inevitably becomes a participant. Their presence leaves a trace — in the material, in the air, in memory.
The garments in this exhibition function as sensory impulses. They respond to movement, whisper, crackle, absorb sound, or generate silence. Materials are not inert here — they are alive, sensitive, and constantly becoming. The garment is not an object with a fixed form; it takes shape through relationship. In Sensations, the garment is not “made” — it happens.
Scents intertwine with textiles, bodies, and space. They inscribe themselves in memory, evoke emotions and personal experiences that cannot be controlled or standardised. Touch here is not a metaphor — it occurs. And it does not repeat itself.
The visual component of the exhibition — fashion photography — is presented alongside descriptions in Braille. Here, the image loses its self-evident status and becomes narrative, language, imagination. Sighted visitors are invited to reconsider their dependence on the visual, while non-sighted visitors are offered the possibility of experiencing images through words and sonic imagery.
Sensations thus invites fashion to be understood not as a result, but as a process. Not as form, but as experience. Not as an object, but as a relationship that unfolds between body, material, and sensations.
Gretė Labanauskaitė is a costume designer who completed a master’s degree in design and pedagogical studies at the Vilnius Academy of Arts. Her works, recognised at the National Design Awards and presented in Lithuania and abroad, come together in this exhibition into a creative practice that examines fashion as a sensory and socially inclusive experience, accessible to all.
The exhibition “SENSATIONS” is complemented by exceptional tours in darkness, during which visitors explore the fashion objects in complete darkness, guided only by feeling and a white cane. The tours are led by the exhibition’s author, Gretė Labanauskaitė.
Tour dates:
25 April at 12.00 and 15.00
23 May at 12.00 and 15.00
6 June at 12.00 and 15.00
The number of places is limited — registration is required: register here or by e-mail at info@labastudio.com. The tours are free of charge.
Coordinator: Justina Trapokaitė
Photographer: Justina Ogurkis
Opening hours of the KCCC Exhibition Hall (Didžioji Vandens g. 2, Klaipėda): Wednesday–Sunday 11.00–19.00 (closed on public holidays). Admission to the exhibition is free on the opening day; afterwards there is a charge. Please note that participants may appear in photographs and video recordings of the event published in various media.