At the heart of Raised by Worms (2020–2025) is the metal garage – once a fixture across post-Soviet space, now vanishing. Since 2020, Pavelas Šalaikiskis has acted as a modern-day flâneur, wandering Vilnius’s deteriorating garage sites and conducting a ‘photographic archaeology’ that captures their gradual erasure while salvaging objects within. His series documents this mass demolition, revealing relics of personal histories – photographs, DIY art, and mementos from childhoods, weddings, and private moments – that carry a ghostly, time-worn quality. These garages, often built illegally during Soviet times and once serving as community gathering sites and makeshift spaces far beyond their intended function, now linger on the urban fringes, awaiting an uncertain fate.
Through curated arrangements of recovered objects and photographic documentation, Raised by Worms serves as a time capsule, prompting reflection on Lithuania’s recent history and the layered personal and collective memories embedded within these humble-yet-monumental structures. As garages vanish, the body of work preserves this pivotal moment, offering an intimate lens on a disappearing facet of the urban landscape and the lives once intertwined with it.
