- Riparia
- Hypoxia
- Penumbra, Fondazione in Between Art Film, 2022
- Chambers of Radiance, Radvila Palace Museum of Art, 2022
- Eternal Return, Tate Modern, 2021
- t 1/2, Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art, 2021
- Sunken Cities, Kunsthaus Pasquart, 2021
- Circular Time. For Aleksandra Kasuba, National Gallery of Art, 2021
- Chambers of Radiance, The PinchukArtCentre, 2020
- Screen City Biennial, 2019
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.
Laser and sound / duration 7 min / 2021 / at the 13th Kaunas Biennial
Sound: Jokūbas Čižikas
It was a Deep Time. I was born in the dark. I grew up surrounded by wet stalactites and stalagmites. The sweaty water scrolled over our bodies, continuously. There were echoes. I knew all of my neighbours – from the times when the tectonic plates made love and the tropical palm forest was becoming a temple of fossilised columns. I have never seen that forest, because I was living in the dark.
Once, during that whole Deep Time, golden shadows wandered over my skin. I saw torches made from canes, growing outside the cave. Each stick burned fast. An artificial warmth, never experienced before, was slowly covering my skin in ash. Creatures wrapped in wool were sliding on their knees, passing under my hips, crossing my elbows, touching my neck violently with their cold and moist hands.
There was a lot of smoke. They were scratching my skin with coal and clay. It did not bother me much. And soon they left. Only to later return. Covered in metal shells and acting differently this time.
They cut my skin and took samples. A cold wind began to circulate in my tiny open wounds. They measured me. According to their parameters I can grow ten centimetres within one thousand of their years. I know what it all means. I have lived through it from the moment they exposed my parts to daylight. I watched their rituals. I was their roof, their bed, their bath, their slave and their protector. A cultural stratum was accumulating on my scars, like a tissue. Look, look the dust is growing! I am the child of tectonic plates, erupted with speed and satisfaction. I am also a flow of lava.
