Emilija Škarnulytė is a Lithuanian-born artist and filmmaker. Working between the realms of the documentary and the imaginary, Škarnulytė makes films and immersive installations exploring deep time and invisible structures. She works in realms that range from the cosmic and geological to the ecological and political.
She most recently presented works at MoMA PS1, Palais de Tokyo, Louisiana MoMA, Villa Medici, MORI Art Museum, Kiasma, Gwangju Biennale, Helsinki Biennale, Penumbra. Her work was presented in solo exhibitions at Kunsthall Trondheim (2024), Canal Projects, NYC (2024), Kunsthaus Göttingen (2024) Ferme-Asile, Sion (2023); Kunsthaus Pasquart, Biel/Bienne (2021); Den Frie, Copenhagen (2021); National Gallery of Vilnius (2021); Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2017); Contemporary Art Centre CAC of Vilnius (2015). An upcoming show at Tate St Ives will open in October 2025.
Prizes awarded to her include the 2023 Ars Fennica Award and the 2019 Future Generation Art Prize. She represented Lithuania at the XXII Triennale di Milano and participated in the Baltic Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. She has films in the collections of the Centre Pompidou, Kadist Foundation, Kiasma, Fondazione in between Art and Film, IFA, HAM, FRAC Corsica, LNMA, MO Museum, and private collections. Her works have been screened at the Tate Modern and Serpentine Gallery in London, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Museum of Modern Art in New York, and numerous film festivals, including Oberhausen, Visions du Réel, Rotterdam, Busan, among many others.
She is a founder and currently co-directs Polar Film Lab, a collective for analogue film practice located in Tromsø, Norway and is a member of the artist duo New Mineral Collective.
Film / 15 min / 2022
With otherworldly poetry and the aid of scientists (from nuclear physicists to marine biologists), we dream through mythologies into worlds beyond human scale yet still affected by our presence. The new film Aphotic Zone dives 4 km deep into the Gulf of Mexico where marine scientists from Philiadelphia’s Temple University are endeavoring to find a super coral species that can thrive under the warming and acidification of the oceans caused by humans. With audio-mixing by Oscar-winning engineers Jaime Baksht and Michelle Couttolenc, the sound was recorded in August 2021 at the Aztec ruins at the heart of Mexico City on the 500th anniversary of the Fall of Tenochtitlan. The horrors of colonialism and the global ecological destruction caused by industrial pollution weave together into a subtle meditation on surviving the ravages of human greed.
Commissioned and produced by Fondazione In Between Art Film for the exhibition Penumbra (Complesso dell’Ospedaletto, Venice, 20.04 – 27.11.2022).