The field of barley that arose next to the National Gallery of Art responds to questions of identity and memory raised in the ongoing exhibition and aims at stimulating the city dwellers’ confrontation with nature, agriculture and the rural people, whose calm and temperate life is perpetually disturbed by the changing political and economic factors.
 

When most city dwellers’ domestic life is strictly attuned according to the days of the week, the country person’s life is more strongly affected by the seasons of the year and the changing weather, on which the pace of their life and relationship with their home and community depends. An opportunity to have their own land and work it gives meaning to and shapes the rural person’s life and existence, helping them to understand the world and themselves better.
 

While many great political changes and power struggles are concentrated in cities, the Lithuanian countryside at different historical
periods has also lived through transformations. More than once occupational regimes attempted to limit the property and activity rights of the people, whether it was done, for example, based on feudal or socialist regime grounds. However, even the compulsory hard labour,
deprivation of land, deportation and the disturbance of the ethnic fabric have not prevented peasants from enduring hardship, keeping their faith and at the same time preserving the inherent cultural basis, inevitably
connected to nature.

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