- 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.
Complesso dell’Ospedaletto, Venice, Italy
2022 04 20 – 11 27
Penumbra is a group exhibition curated by Alessandro Rabottini and Leonardo Bigazzi that feature eight new video and filmic installations commissioned to Karimah Ashadu, Jonathas de Andrade, Aziz Hazara, He Xiangyu, Masbedo (Nicolò Massazza and Iacopo Bedogni), James Richards, Emilija Škarnulytė, and Ana Vaz, and produced by Fondazione In Between Art Film.
Taking inspiration from the rarefied atmosphere of Venice and from the hybrid architecture of the Ospedaletto and the church of Santa Maria dei Derelitti, Penumbra is conceived as a stage where images, sounds, and the set design are in reciprocal dialogue with the architecture and its history, and explores moving images as a site of material and metaphorical transformation. The concept of “penumbra” is addressed on two levels: in material terms, the absence of light is the necessary condition for making moving images visible; in metaphorical terms, semi-darkness is interpreted as a threshold or place of transition within which the contours and appearance of things blur together. Understood as the space we inhabit as much at nightfall as at dawn, semi-darkness redefines the distinction between true and false, historical memory and personal specters, the reality of bodies and their social representations, the human subject and the subjugated environment. Through a diversity of languages ranging from narrative approaches to visual and sound experimentations, moving images stand here as a multi-faceted medium to speak of a world that is global, fragmented and in continuous metamorphosis.
Presented within a sequence of areas of darkness and light, the works echo the transformations that the venue faced throughout the centuries, following its foundation in the 16th century as a hospital for the needy. The exhibition design by Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli and his studio 2050+ reflects on the history of the location and spatialize the curatorial concept by looking at the interconnected notions of human and architectural anatomy.
