Photo by Andrej Vasilenko

Emilija Škarnulytė (born 1987) is an interdisciplinary artist who experiments with the possibilities provided by video media, balances between [documentarism/documentality] and fiction, and, with the help of video format and plot devices, explores the “deep time” and its various regiments, ranging from geological or cosmic to ecological and political.  

Škarnulytė’s films and video installations feature anthropocenic landscapes observed through the eye of a camera, which are constructed and deconstructed in a technically and visually impeccable way. Combining this approach with subtly directed and recorded performative actions (‘No Place Rising’, 2015; ‘Aldona’, 2015), allows her to create a tactile element which assists in the experience of landscape. Škarnulytė’s selected locations, objects, and subjects for filming often require effort and courage, but also enable her to unlock hitherto unseen, unexperienced and uncontemplated space for the audience. 

In 2019, Škarnulytė was awarded the Future Generation Art Prize for her video installation ‘t 1/2’ (2019) – a post-human myth and visual meditation about modern science from the point of view of a future archaeologist. “t 1/2” is also known as half-life – a term used in nuclear physics to describe the decay of nuclear particles. A large-scale video installation constitutes the landscape-mimicking architecture of a mirrored ceiling, conceived by the artist with the help of 3D scanning technology. Embodying a Siren, Škarnulytė links the past with the present by exploring Etruscan burial grounds, Ignalina’s atomic power plant, the neutrino observatory in Japan, Duga radars, the CERN laboratory in Switzerland, and the Cold War submarine base in the Arctic Circle. The viewers of this work encounter supra-human objects: impeding climate catastrophe, natural phenomena, ideological constructions, scientific infrastructures, and recent geopolitical processes. 

Having graduated from the Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art in Norway with a master’s degree in contemporary art, Škarnulytė is a founder of Polar Film Lab in Norway, an art collective for 16mm analogue film practice. She is also a member of the New Mineral Collective duo, with which she has just presented a new work at the 1st Toronto Biennial of Art. Recently, Škarnulytė’s work has been exhibited at the 1st Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art (RIBOCA, 2018), Ballroom Marfa in Texas (the US), Kadist Art Foundation in Paris, Bold Tendencies in London, and at her solo exhibition at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. She represented Lithuania at the 22nd Milan Triennial (2019). Prior to this, her works were exhibited at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Hors Pistes festival in Paris, Edinburgh International Film Festival, São Paulo International Film Festival, LUMEN festival in New York, the International Film Festival Message to Man in Saint Petersburg. Her works have also appeared at Manifesta 10 (2014), the São Paulo Art Biennial (2014), and in the Baltic Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture (2016). She has had solo shows at the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius, Decad in Berlin, and Podium in Oslo. In 2016, she was awarded the Young Artist Prize by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania. 

www.emilijaskarnulyte.com