Pleasure

This project explores the paradoxical nature of pleasure — authentic, uncontrollable, and deeply human. Through intimate portraits and conversations with eleven participants, the artist reveals personal stories of desire, love, and sexuality, focusing especially on the often-overlooked experiences of people with disabilities. Merging themes of queerness, vulnerability, and bodily diversity, the project challenges societal norms that restrict how and whose pleasure is seen.

Janina Sabaliauskaitė (1991) is a photographer based in Vilnius, Lithuania, and Newcastle upon Tyne,
 UK. In 2014, she graduated with a BA in Photography, Video and Digital Imaging from Sunderland University.
 By raising questions of identity and gender, the artist explores themes of eroticism, sexual education, and disability. Her exhibitions include Dyke Into (JCDecaux Lithuania, Vilnius, 2023), Sending Love (Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland, 2022), and On Our Backs (The NewBridge Project, Newcastle, 2017) and Anna-Stina Treumund: How to Recognise a Lesbian? at KUMU Art Museum, Tallinn (now on view until 11 January 2026). The project Pleasure was exhibited earlier this year at Radvile Palace Art Museum in Vilnius (curator Monika Kalinauskaitė).