sustainable crafts as a lifestyle
My name is Gintarė Murauskienė and I was born in small Lithuanian town Marijampolė. Since my childhood I used to make things with my hands, from drawings to wooden doll’s furniture, but textile crafts were the first forms of expression. Spending all the summers in a remote village at my grandparents, I enjoyed the direct intersection with old Lithuanian traditions, handcrafts, where my grandmother teached me to knit, and my grandfather showed me his secrets of woodworking. Growing up in a creative environment, I finished a School of Fine Arts in Marijampolė.
When I turned 18 years old, I decided to study Foreign Languages and Literature, left home and moved to Vilnius, where I completed my undergraduate and master’s degrees. During my studies I had an exchange year in Berlin at Humbold University, where I became fascinated by Berlin’s art scene and contemporary art. Later for many years after the studies my main activity was working as a translator, but crafts were always nearby: I painted, created things, crafted textile objects. Having 3 kids, I was a translator by day and a textile artist by night, splitting my time between working as a translator and my own textile projects.
In 2022 I started to focus entirely on my creative work. I’m happy to call myself a passionate textile and fiber artist with an interest to create sustainable and environmental-friendly textile art objects, using second-hand, recycled and upcycled materials, combining textile craftmanship with a strong knack for storytelling and linguistic approaches, incorporating text into knitted, weaved, embroidered pieces.
Artistic work
2025 - Ongoing Projects
"The (Re)Birth of a Sweater“
With the support of EU program “Creative Europe”, I take part as a team leader in the international art collaboration project „The (Re)Birth of a Sweater“, where 3 artists (me as textile artist, fashion designer Kenzo Terada, photographer Rita Stankevičiūtė) work together on the textile sustainability theme across cultures and, as a result, create a new piece – a sustainable artistic fashion design object and a serie of photographs, documenting the slow creation process as a contrary action to the fast fashion. The textile piece will be handknitted using traditional needles (without using any industrial machines) in recycled materials. The photographs should visualise the collaboration of the artists seeking to contribute to textile sustainability and should be an integral part of the project.
"Reconstruction of traditional Lithuanian mittens, photographed in 1930-35 by B.Buračas”
With the support of Lithuanian Council for Culture, I reconstruct and recreate traditional Lithuanian mittens and gloves, photographed in 1930-1935 by a Lithuanian photographer Balys Buračas, using handspun, hand-dyed wool yarn.
2024
Creating and handknitting a sweater, inspired by traditional Lithuanian woven patterns, made of local wool, in collaboration with the Lithuanian fashion designer Inga Skripka. The sweater as a symbol of deteriorating crafts was presented on the national television, Lithuanian fashion podcasts, Kaunas Book Fair 2024 etc.
2023
A serie of 5 unit handknitted collection „They walk between us“, consisting of 5 sweaters, depicting historical influential Lithuanian personalities (the author of the Lithuanian anthem V.Kudirka, the female writer Žemaitė, the composer M.K.Čiurlionis, the contemporary artist Jonas Mekas and a middle-ages duchess Barbora Radvilaitė). The yarn for the handknitted garments was obtained in second-hand shops, thriftstores, with the approach to showcase the possibilities of repurposing textiles. The collection was presented several times on the crowded streets as a guerilla project, collecting the reactions of passengers.