The Keeper of Crossed Roads

Microcrystalline wax, light, mirrored acrylic, dimensions variable, 2025 – 26

Originally commissioned by Biržai Museum Sėla, The Keeper of Crossed Roads reimagines one of the most recognisable figures in Lithuanian folk culture – the Pensive Christ. Traditionally carved from oak and placed at village crossroads, these contemplative figures have stood for centuries as quiet witnesses to journeys, grief, endurance and hope.

The work was developed in collaboration with Lithuanian folk sculptor Algirdas Butkevičius, whose hand-carved oak Pensive Christ served as the point of departure for the series. Laura Dzelzytė translates the sculpture into translucent microcrystalline wax, casting each figure through the slow repetition of hand-poured layers. The sculptures preserve the memory of the original while transforming its material language – solid wood becomes fragile, luminous wax.

For Dzelzytė, who left Lithuania more than a decade ago, the work reflects on migration, the instability of memory, and the ways identity is continually reconstructed across time and place. The title, The Keeper of Crossed Roads, expands the meaning of the figure. It becomes a guardian of crossings – between countries, generations, histories and states of being – occupying the threshold where departure and return, remembering and forgetting, permanence and change exist simultaneously.

Presented on varying height plinths and illuminated from within, the sculptures multiply into an endless field of reflections. Through repetition, subtle differences accumulate, suggesting that identity survives as something continually remade through memory and experience. The installation transforms a familiar cultural icon into a meditation on displacement, belonging and the fragile persistence of cultural inheritance.

Following its debut at Biržai Museum Sėla, The Keeper of Crossed Roads will be exhibited at Museum Beelden aan Zee from November 2026 to January 2027, continuing the work's own journey across Europe while opening new conversations around memory, migration and the enduring power of sculpture.