Burnout
Location: 12 Captain Cook Square (TK Maxx Store), Middlesbrough, TS1 5UB
Dates: Fri 26 Sept - Sat 4 Oct (closed Mon 29 Sept & Tue 30 Sept)
Hours: Daily 10am-5pm (Sun 12-4pm)
Access: Step Free
Artists: Sigita Silina
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Sigita Silina is a visual artist with the focus on socio-cultural nuances. She merges the boundaries of art, science, and philosophy, inviting viewers to explore the interplay between technology, visual culture, and the depths of human consciousness. With her thought- provoking works, Sigita invites us to contemplate the multifaceted nature of our perception and the profound influence of images and technology on human psyche, looking into how those shape our understanding of the world. She often isolates an individual from the crowd and places them in a calm, cinematic landscape, in order for them to face up to their own inner-turmoil and solitude. With all her work, she creates spaces that are both illusionary and hyper-real – where one can enter the mind and the physical body at the same time.
about the show.
This project is a quiet resistance to the noise of the achievement society. Influenced by the writings of philosopher Byung-Chul Han, it responds to a culture in which the self becomes a relentless project-optimized, surveilled, and exhausted. We are told to be our most authentic, efficient selves, yet in that pursuit we burn out, becoming more disconnected from others and from our inner lives. Rather than directly diagnosing this crisis, the work turns toward its remedy: slowness, softness, presence. Inspired by the aesthetics of Yashikei-a genre of healing and atmospheric stillness-the film invites a sensory experience of calm. It offers a space where nothing needs to be achieved, where time stretches, and where just being is enough. In this refusal to perform, the work suggests a quiet, radical form of freedom.
