Missing NO.1 (2022) Sculpture by Mothia Bella

I grew up in a quiet Lithuanian village near the Belarusian border. It’s not a place many people would know, but it gave me space—to be silent, to listen, and to notice the way feelings live beneath the surface of things. Because of a small hearing difference I was born with, I’ve always spoken a little slower, a little softer than others. For a long time, I thought that meant my emotions had no voice. It took years before I understood: my hands were already speaking for me.
I began sculpting as a child, but it wasn't until my late teens that I understood what I was really doing. I wasn’t just shaping clay—I was pulling things out of myself that I couldn’t put into words. Anxiety, tenderness, grief, hope—they all came through in faces with closed eyes, in bodies entangled with things that grow, decay, or wait quietly in the dark.
My studio is a small attic above my grandmother’s house. There’s nothing romantic about it—just wooden beams, cold mornings, and tools I've used so many times they feel like an extension of my fingers. But it's here, in that private silence, that most of my work takes shape.
A few years ago, I was invited to show my pieces in a small group exhibition in Lida, across the border. One of the curators had come from Hong Kong, and to my surprise, they approached me after the show. They said my sculpture felt like something “unfinished and aching.” That was the first time I realized someone outside my own skin could understand what I was trying to say. They later offered to represent me—and I said yes.
Since then, I’ve shared my work with people I’ve never met, from countries I’ve never seen. I don’t pretend to be confident. I don’t have the right words for interviews. But I hope that what I create finds a way to reach someone’s quiet place—the part of them that feels too strange, too delicate, or too much.
If my work gives someone permission to feel without explanation, then that’s enough.

• Nationality: LITHUANIA
• Date of birth : 2002
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Contemporary Lithuanian Artists