Shin Haus is excited to present Haoma by Lithuanian contemporary artist and poet Vita Zaman. Her artistic practice includes mediums of painting, sculpture, and performance to explore and investigate themes of visibility, disappearance, value, and attention capitol. Her interests include fictional autobiographies, occult, and eco-feminism. With these wide array of interests, recently her oeuvre has consisted of illustrative embroidery paintings.

Not only is she an artist, Zaman is also a gallerist, curator, and art director. Starting out her art career in London, she established IBID Projects about 13 years ago. This gallery was intended to be used as an artist’s space rather than as a conventional commercial gallery. It was here that she could experiment with performance art and interact with local artists by creating an autonomous gathering space. Soon after she traveled to New York City and then moved to the West Coast of America. For the past seven years, she has immersed herself in the desert and switched her focus solely to her own practice. With a background in fine arts and art history, her versatility in the artworld emerges in her own work. Using a mixture of materials, her paintings emulate the years of experience through the use of value, color, composition, and detail.

Haoma represents ecofeminist beliefs through metaphors and symbolism. Her paintings combine organic forms found in our natural environment and cultivates it with monkeys. Bright spiritual colors are washed out for the background giving the subjects a notion of an abstracted space. The subjects are then skillfully rendered with embroidery within said space. Each threaded piece portraying textured liveliness, creates a distraction of ambiguity. The ambiguity then blinds us from the underlying problems in the environment caused by current gender inequality and capitalism. However, with a closer look we get a clearer view just as we would in the real world. Each piece in this exhibition reflects possible real life coincidences. Ecofeminism is a theology combining feminist and political ecologist views ultimately realizing that capitalism and patriarchy impacts the degradation and domination of both women and our biological environment. Zaman’s choice of using our hypothesized primitive primates as a center figure amongst naturesque embodiments is what makes her show a poetic metaphor.

Vita’s use of transparent overlay of primary and complementary colors depicts an illusionary landscape which in effect influences peace and tranquility. The unexpected forms and color reminds us of an art movement called spiritualist art. A well-known spiritualist artist is Hilma af Klint. Most notable pieces from Klint are her portrayals of altars through colorful solid geometric shapes. A lot of her pieces are abstracted geometric shapes sharing a space with whimsical and flowing lines that evoke child-like wonder. Hilma af Klint believed her art to be about her process and listening to her intuition rather than taking control. In a way, Zaman is also portraying natural states with bright colors to challenge viewpoints on what needs to be controlled versus what needs not to be.

Vita Zaman studied art and curation at Goldsmiths College (BA Fine Art and Art History, MA Creative Curating) and the Royal College of Art (MA Photography) in London. She was the co-founder of IBID Projects. Numerous key galleries and museums have featured Vita Zaman's work in the past. Solo exhibitions include Tema Gallery(2022), Carlyle(2009), Artists Space(2008), IBID Projects(2007), Contemporary Art(2002), and Cabinet(2002). Group exhibitions include National Art of Gallery in Vilnius(2019), Emily Harvey Art Foundation(2010), Great Barrington(2009),Vilnius Contemporary Art Center(2009), Lower Manhattan Shipyard(2008), Sexy Machinery(2002), and Frankfurter Kunstverein(2002). Zaman also participated in Hotel Warszawa Art Fair(2023) and NADA New York(2023).