At the end of April 2026, the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius opened the new international group exhibition, Superglue, or Inventing the Friend. It marks a new phase for the CAC, inaugurating the exhibition programme under its new director, Valentinas Klimašauskas. Predominantly presenting figurative art, the exhibition invites a reconsideration of the CAC’s relationship with its audience.
Bringing together historical and contemporary works, Superglue, or Inventing the Friend reflects on encounters with the other through different notions of otherness, the emergence of the posthuman figure, and contemporary art itself as something not entirely knowable—something foreign. Assemblages of new and historical figures, individual and collective, implicitly raise the question: what kind of glue today could bind together a fragmented, combative, and rather narcissistic society? What role can art play in a world where opinions are becoming increasingly rigid? And, in the hell of ideological excess, what might still allow us to imagine relationships that open the possibility of authentic, unpredictable, non-commodified experiences—friendships, or even the possibility of falling in love with the other rather than rejecting them?
What forces still compel us to form connections amid growing polarisation, narcissism, constant networking, the commodification of relationships, and multiple crises and wars? Is it still possible to establish a relationship with the other? Can we construct ourselves positively through the other—seeing them not only as an enemy or a friend? And if so, might this be one of the functions of contemporary art? What frightens us today—and what might make us flee an exhibition?
Finally: how, despite everything, can we become friends?
The people listed below represent only a fraction of those who helped glue this exhibition together—its opening and the many events surrounding it—in the hope of bringing people closer together.