Emilija Škarnulytė
Index

Emilija Škarnulytė (b. Vilnius, Lithuania 1987) is an artist and filmmaker.

Working between documentary and the imaginary, Škarnulytė makes films and immersive installations exploring deep time and invisible structures, from the cosmic and geologic to the ecological and political. Her blind grandmother gently touches the weathered statue of a Soviet dictator. Neutrino detectors and particular colliders measure the cosmos with otherworldly architecture. Post-human species swim through submarine tunnels above the Arctic Circle and crawl through tectonic fault lines in the Middle Eastern desert.

Winner of the 2019 Future Generation Art Prize, Škarnulytė represented Lithuania at the XXII Triennale di Milano and was included in the Baltic Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Biennale of Architecture. With solo exhibitions at Tate Modern (2021), Kunsthaus Pasquart (2021), Den Frie (2021), National Gallery of Art in Vilnius (2021), CAC (2015) and Kunstlerhaus Bethanien (2017), she has participated in group shows at Ballroom Marfa, Seoul Museum of Art, Kadist Foundation, and the First Riga Biennial. In 2022, Škarnulytė participated in the group exhibition Penumbra organized by Fondazione In Between Art Film on the occasion of the 59th Venice Biennale. Her numerous prizes include the Kino der Kunst Project Award, Munich (2017); Spare Bank Foundation DNB Artist Award (2017), and the National Lithuanian Art Prize for Young Artists (2016)), and she was nominated as the candidate for the Ars Fennica art award 2023. She received an undergraduate degree from the Brera Academy of Art in Milan and holds a masters from the Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art.

Her films are in the IFA, Kadist Foundation and Centre Pompidou collections and have been screened at the Serpentine Gallery, UK, Centre Pompidou, France, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York and in numerous film festivals including in Rotterdam, Busan, and Oberhausen. Most recently she concluded her tenures at Art Explora and Cite des Art, which occurred on the heels of another significant residency at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture. 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 artist duo New Mineral Collective, recently commissioned for a new work by the First Toronto Biennial.

Contact: skarnulyte.emilija@gmail.com

Screen City Biennial, 2019

Screen City Biennial, Stavanger, Norway

2019 10 17 – 10 30

Deep Point Cloud had been commissioned by Screen City Biennial and was premiered during Ecologies – lost, found and continued.

With the theme, Ecologies – lost, found and continued, the Biennial engages a post-anthropocentric worldview: it searches for ecologies that may be ‘lost’ to the dominant imaginary of the modern, rationalized Western society and found in what by some is considered to be the peripheries of this. However, perhaps these are not peripheries but rather deep-rooted centers of knowledge which could guide us towards more sustainable, conscious and spiritually anchored futures, if continued. Bringing these ecologies forth through art, the Biennial asks: how can non-anthropocentric positions and holistic knowledge systems be continued as foundations on which we can move onwards––be brought into new context, inspire processes of innovation, as well as ways of presenting and engaging art?

Screen City Biennial