The upcoming solo exhibition by Emilija Škarnulytė at the ‘Sies + Höke’ gallery in Düsseldorf, Germany, is scheduled to open on August 30th at 6 PM. On the occasion of DC Open 2024, Emilija Škarnulytė transforms the spatiality of ‘Sies + Höke’: white cubic dimensions of familiarity inverted, a darkened cavern entices into an immersive encounter with site-specific installative experiences. A specially coded choreography unfolds across displaced timescales, the works ‘Æqualia’ (2023) and ‘Aphotic Zone’ (2022) form as an undulating odyssey through vortexing waters and aphotic depths—space and time slows as the senses open up to what it means to become other, and more, than ourselves.
Emilija Škarnulytė (b. 1987) is a Lithuanian-born nomadic artist and filmmaker. Working at the intersections of documentary and speculative fiction, her immersive audio-visual installations are aesthetic explorations in world-making across stratified temporalities.
Approaching the camera as a future-archaeological tool, Škarnulytė permeates the layers of deep time: from neutrino ghosts of the universe to decommissioned nuclear power plants, forgotten underwater cities and uncanny natural phenomena become subjects of submerged studies, guided by human and non-human entanglements. She articulates post-human counter-mythologies and archaeological considerations of futurity, seamlessly melding science and culture to probe realms ranging from the cosmic and geological to the ecological and political. The remnants of modernity, aphotic recesses of the Earth’s aqueous body as much as the human psyche tide the uncharted waters of Škarnulytė’s interdisciplinary endeavours, which reveal the traces of human hubris and allure new orientations for connection and sensemaking outside the scales of our anthropocentric age.
Winner of the Ars Fennica Award 2023 and the 2019 Future Generation Art Prize, Škarnulytė recently presented works at Gwangju Biennale, Henie Onstad Triennale, Vilnius Biennale, and Helsinki Biennale. Solo exhibitions include: Kunsthall Trondheim (2024); Kunsthaus Göttingen (2024); Ferme-Asile, Sion (2023); Tate Modern, London (2021); Kunsthaus Pasquart, Biel/Bienne (2021); Den Frie, Copenhagen (2021); National Gallery of Vilnius (2021); Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2017); and Contemporary Art Centre CAC of Vilnius (2015). She represented Lithuania at the XXII Triennale di Milano and participated in the Baltic Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale as well as the group exhibition Penumbra, organised by the Fondazione In Between Art Film on the occasion of the 59th Venice Biennale. Her films are found in the collections of IFA, Kadist Foundation and Centre Pompidou, and have been screened at the Serpentine Gallery, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and Museum of Modern Art in New York, and numerous film festivals. In October 2025, Škarnulytė will open her solo exhibition at Tate St Ives, Cornwall.
The exhibition will run until September 28th.
