The Seimas of Lithuania declared 2017 the year of Algirdas Julius Greimas.
The biography of A. J. Greimas is closely related to the city of Šiauliai: in 1929-1931, Algirdas Julius Greimas went to the boys’ gymnasium in Šiauliai (now, J. Janonis Gymnasium), in 1940-1944, he taught at the girls’ gymnasium (now, Didždvaris gymnasium) and at the Trade Institute. Therefore, the artists were invited to participate in the plein-air competition of artistic accents of plastic art, dedicated to the perpetuation of A. J. Greimas in the public spaces of Šiauliai city.
The design of the sculpture Laumė, created by Reda Uogintienė, won the second place in the announced competition. According to the author, the hag reflects A. J. Greimas’ semiotic research, explaining fairy tales, folk tales, searching for the meaning of characters, and depicts the transformation of a pagan deity – a bird (cuckoo) turning into a woman.
The hag in this case is Gegė, who controls portions of goodness in the human life and outlines fate. It is not for nothing that Greimas himself stated that the hag was the most complicated character in Lithuanian mythology.
“My sculpture is not a monument, it is an artistic interpretation of a woman’s character. The woman’s feature to change, to manipulate, to be able to become everything is interesting for me. Therefore, Laumė is not the final expression of the character but its “intermediate stop” – transformation – a visual expression of the process how one character turns into another ... I think that the purpose of sculpture in general these days is not to become monuments to generals and promote war but to create visual puzzles or interpretations for urban and rural society, even romantic ones ... Also, the assessment of works of art, say, good or bad, like in sport, is more a matter of propagandists, and this does not create studies in art or a dialogue ... ”
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