Viltė Bražiūnaitė and Tomas Sinkevičius. Watery Eyes, aluminium, tinted acrylic, 2019. Foto Tomas Sinkevičius

Viltė Bražiūnaitė (born 1991) and Tomas Sinkevičius (born 1991) are a duo of artists who explore the relationship between technology, nature, and politics. Their video works and installations feature aesthetics that mimic a commercial look, and intricate scenes of nature consumption.  

In the wider context of Anthropocene ideas, this duo stands out for their attentive focus on human interiority, noticeable since their first joint installation ‘A Romance of Many Dimensions’ (2014). In this work, the seemingly depersonalised digital world, its possibilities, and deformities became a spatially embedded conductor of longing. With the emergence of elements of natural history in their work, their portrayal of feelings of loneliness and confusion, experienced in a no–longer–natural nature permeated with lusts and interventions, became even more pronounced. These complex emotions are conveyed by hyper-realistic animation (‘Born Brilliant’, 2016; ‘Afterwork’, 2017) and the use of production technologies that definitively erase the boundaries between a salmon and a car (‘Paint Job’, 2018) or a dog and a quilted jacket (‘Air’, ‘Lo’, ‘Champion’, and ‘Peak’, 2018). In their latest sculpture series, ‘Watery Eyes’ (2019), impeccable colour filters act as a thin border of fear that prevents us from directly experiencing the elemental world around us.  

Viltė Bražiūnaitė and Tomas Sinkevičius graduated from the Vilnius Academy of Arts in 2014 with bachelor’s degrees in photography and media art. Bražiūnaitė later studied for a master’s degree at the Vienna Academy of Arts and the Sculpture Department of the Vilnius Academy of Arts, while Sinkevičius continued his studies at Konstfack University in Stockholm. The artists have co-organized solo exhibitions at Studio 17 in Stavanger, the Vienna Academy of Arts in Austria, Konstfack in Sweden, and the Editorial project space in Vilnius. The duo’s group exhibitions include exhibitions in the Swallow project space in Vilnius, Artissima Art Fair (2019) in Turin, Fonda in Leipzig, Autarkia project space in Vilnius, Galleri Box in Gothenburg, MO Museum in Vilnius, Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna, the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius, Moscow International Biennial for Young Art (2018), and elsewhere. In 2018, the duo received the Birgit Jürgenssen Prize in Austria.