On September 1, 2024, at 2:30 PM, a screening of films by Emilija Skarnulytė will take place at the Art-O-Rama art fair in Marseille. The event will include a discussion with Emilija Skarnulytė, Justė Kostikovaitė, and Merilin Talumaa, moderated by Flora Fettah. The venue is located on the 3rd floor of La Tour, La Cartonnerie, at the 1e petit Plateau, Friche la Belle de Mai. Admission is free of charge.
Roots to Routes curators Merilin Talumaa and Justė Kostikovaitė are delighted to invite you to the screening and discussion of ‘Dryads of Cosquer’, a tripartite project featured in the Lithuanian Season in France 2024. The programme includes also an exhibition and artist residency, and a performance. It highlights works by Baltic and international contemporary artists influenced by the heritage of Marija Gimbutas.
For the Dryads of Cosquer screening and discussion at the Art-O-Rama art fair, Lithuanian artist Emilija Škarnulytė will present a pair of works that the artist calls ‘the Goddesses’. Æqualia (2023) is presented as an immersive installation that navigates the dynamic waters of the Amazon basin. A post-human chimera, blending the forms of a pink river dolphin and a mermaid, travels the six kilometres where the Amazon meets the Rio Solimões and the Rio Negro. These rivers are powerful, beautiful yet threateningly vast – one milky and laden with the silt of the Andes, and the other black and cloudy with rotting matter from the rainforest. Škarnulytė’s visions merge the realms of reality and myth, evoking the complex balance and fluidity of ancient goddess civilisations, as is also proposed by Marija Gimbutas. In her latest film, Xirasia (2023), Škarnulytė plunges into the late Neolithic period, drawing on themes of ancient worship and spirituality. The film is inspired by Gimbutas’ book Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe 6500 – 3500 BC, weaving a narrative that unveils the spectres of the matristic society of the past, highlighting the legacy of Goddess worship and the link between humanity and the sacred landscapes they venerated.
The screening will be accompanied by a discussion between the artist Emilija Škarnulytė, and curators Merilin Talumaa and Justė Kostikovaitė, and will be moderated by the curator, writer and researcher Flora Fettah.
