Contemporary artwork from diabetic glucose strips

Family is a collage of almost 2,000 used diabetic test strips and paint, made for the endocrinology department of Kaunas Clinics on the occasion of World Diabetes Day.

When I was diagnosed with diabetes, the first things I was given were blood test strips: you prick a finger, put a drop of blood on the strip and watch the result. Almost from the first one I started keeping them, thinking I would use them in a collage one day. When Kaunas Clinics invited me to their World Diabetes Day event, I knew this was the moment to make the piece and give it to the clinic. That year’s theme was the family, and with my first child still small, it was deeply personal. Some of the strips were collected by other people with diabetes.

At the centre are the profiles of a father, a mother and two children, turned towards each other. When I made it I did not know I was expecting my daughter Lilija; I found out only later, after the piece had been donated. For me this is a tender, personal work. It hangs in the endocrinology department of Kaunas Clinics.