The images in Eglė Budvytytė's videoperformance, 'As if You Are Catching a Bomb' (2013), are very familiar to a 21st c. individual. It is a global city, an environment in which not only contemporary life is running its daily course, but also where a constantly growing tension occasionally breaks out in the form of social conflicts and clashes marked by physical traumas. True, a contemporary individual mostly encounters this reality indirectly, but through the media - channels of mass information and corresponding devices. The media not only reflect, but also itself create images. The heroes of modern times, as the characters seen in Budvytytė's work and their staged actions, are proof of this. The image-multiplying media (photography, cinema and the internet) have become firmly established in 21st c. contemporary art and have made a crucial impact on the language of traditional art forms (painting, sculpture, etc.), shaping the artists' imagination and the themes of their works.

In the 21st century, Lithuanian art became part of the open global stage - artists have joined global networks, taken part in international shows and studied in art academies both in and outside Lithuania. Some of them live and work abroad for longer or shorter periods, while maintaining close links to the Lithuanian art scene. Critical relations to local matters of the present and past have merged with multilingual reflections on modernity, based on a large variety of local perspectives on globally urgent problems. The relevance of Lithuanian contemporary art is confirmed by the signs of its international recognition - since the country's first participation in the Venice Biennale in 1999, the Lithuanian pavilion was awarded the jury's special mentions four times, and in 2019, it won the Golden Lion.

The work of contemporary Lithuanian artists is characterised by critical reflections on memory (Deimantas Narkevičius, Gintaras Makarevičius and others), cultural stereotypes (Dainius Liškevičius, Academic Training Group and others), power structures and norms established in society (Evaldas Jansas, Artūras Raila, Svajonė and Paulius Stanikas and others), personal identity and its representations (Eglė Rakauskaitė, Andrius Zakarauskas, Adomas Danusevičius ir kt.), and imagination inspired by media culture. These themes are executed through various techniques (moving images, painting, installation etc.).

Due to the state's inconsistent policy regarding the acquisition of contemporary art, the museum collection of contemporary art is not large, but quite a few important works from the turn of the century as well as recent works by Lithuanian artists have been acquired by the country's private collectors. The presentation of contemporary art at the National Gallery of Art is significantly supplemented by exhibits from the Lewben Art Foundation and BTA ART collections.