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‘A Working Class Diary’ exhibited at the Lithuanian Embassy in New Delhi on Friday, 8th of April, features 24 works. Cast in oil on canvass, the paintings represent the daily life of Lithuania’s contemporary working class. 

In the 21st century, the ‘working class’ is no longer what it used to be. Having moved from large factories with their extensive, sometimes endless shop-floors to small and compact cubicles of multistory glass towers like those in Gurgaon, present-day laborers, dressed in their suits rather than overalls, spend working hours at a computer desk lending their brains instead of muscles to produce corporate good. One thing has not changed, however: for the majority, the working routine remains as dull and monotonous as several decades ago.

A renowned Lithuanian artist Romualdas Balinskas (b. 1959) takes the challenge of document- ing this daily routine in a series of paintings that reminds a collection of snapshots taken with a somewhat laidback and purposeless attitude. “Small. Monochromic. Strange. Sometimes fun- ny. These pictures tell us a story of a petty, humdrum, unprepossessing life,” says the author. “They are many and they tend to multiply. They line up on the wall and move like the frames of a cinematographic film, claiming their space and their right to infinity...” The entire collection, consisting of 196 works, all sized 30x40 cm, indeed seems as a pretentious claim to conquer the infinitude!

People go to the meetings, they repose, they attend their land lots in the countryside, but they also go to theatre and church... The older generation will definitely get some sense of nostalgia while exploring these highly reliefic works embossed with oil paint generously applied by a palette knife.