Edita Dermontaité Research Artist

Edita Dermontaité is an artistic researcher born in Lithuania and since 2011 living and working in Gent, Belgium. In 2009 Edita defended her Master thesis "Monumental Arts in Public Soviet Interiors in Vilnius” and received her degree in Cultural Heritage and Conservation at Vilnius University in Lithuania. In 2015 she obtained her second Masters degree in Visual Arts at LUCA School of Arts in Gent, Belgium and received a jury price for her installation “Brussels Airport, Security Check, 23/12/2014, 19:33 - 19:39”.

Edita utilises a variety of techniques and tools, including woodblock printing, pencils and sounds. Since 2014 her focus has strongly shifted from figurative image towards non-figurative abstractionism and installation. However, her main focus is always directed towards the process of creation of art, audible and visual attributes of different places, combination of text and image, sound and image, and research.

Therefore, in 2016, Edita started her doctoral research in the Art & Argument group at KU Leuven/LUCA School of Arts entitled “From Non-Visual to Visual Information in Non-Personal Places”. This research includes the investigation of the creative process, creative writing and the production of an art work. She researches the soundscape of the present-day: non-personal, public, urban sounds in non-personal places. Edita says that her aim is “not to express the need to distance ourselves from them, even if we are overwhelmed with many sounds, many movements, even if we complain about noise pollution and hide within ourselves, within music or nature”. On the contrary, she seeks to show that there is freedom in the way we relate to them. Therefore, Dermontaité personalises sounds by connecting them with personal memories, by making associations, by transforming sounds into personal objects. She seeks to express that personalised sounds can make non-personal spaces, that emits them, and the relation with them both personal and intimate.