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.
The PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv, Ukraine
2020 02 09 – 05 01
An immersive cinematic environment, “Chambers of Radiance” is a meditation on the ruins of humanity as seen from a distant future. A snake crawls through nuclear reactors into a burial chamber. Deep-sea mining companies trawl the ocean floor amid coccolithophore plankton sinking to the bottom, carrying carbon with it. Jellyfish dance through the dark waters. A mirrored black liquid ceiling reflects our actions back to us. A future beyond reckoning drifts into view, where our advanced technology has become wreckage at the bottom of the ocean. In a theatre resembling an Etruscan tomb, we witness it all caught in a cycle of eternal return from life to death to rebirth.
Curator Björn Geldhof