The exhibition “Life in Your Palms” invites you to look at money in a way we do not usually see it – not as an everyday tool of exchange, but rather as an object having its own history of birth, life, and demise.
This cycle, perpetuated in photographs, reveals the journey from minting tools, coin blanks, and other production processes at the Lithuanian Mint to the strictly regulated counting, sorting, checking, packaging, and destruction of banknotes and coins at Lietuvos bankas.
During this visual journey, we can get closer to the closed spaces where what later ends up in our hands and wallets every day is created and handled. Money is no longer an abstract economic concept, but a human story – a combination of technology, an unimaginable amount of manual labour, control, and transience.
The images captured in the photographs encourage us to reflect on how short-lived what we take for granted as a measure of value really is, and how many invisible processes lie behind each specific banknote or coin. The photographs reveal not only the technical processes, but also the human dimension of this world, such as the movements of workers’ hands, their concentration, attention to detail, strict rhythm and order. Although money is considered a symbol of rationality and economic calculation, here it is primarily a material object that is shaped and maintained by humans. At the same time, its transience is very clear, since money only exists for as long as it is of proper quality and serves its purpose.
The exhibition invites us to step back from our usual and almost automatic relationship with money, to slow down, take a closer look, and rethink our relationship with an object that we constantly touch but very rarely appreciate as a real, material experience.
Exhibition
Throughout the exhibition period, 64 photographs will be presented. The display will change cyclically – every two months, visitors will be introduced to new works. This structure encourages returning to the Lietuvos bankas’ Kaunas branch and, at the same time, discovering the historic building itself.
Exhibition venue and time
Venue: Lietuvos bankas, Kaunas Branch, Maironio St. 25
Exhibition dates: February 12, 2026 – August 12, 2026.
Visiting hours:
• Monday–Wednesday: 8:30 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
• Thursday–Friday: 8:30 a.m.–6:00 p.m.
Exhibition curators
Asta Ravaitytė-Kučinskienė, Rūta Kupraitienė
Photographer
Evaldas Lasys
Designer
Inga Varnelė