Emilija Škarnulytė (b. 1987) is a Lithuanian-born artist and filmmaker. Working between documentary and imaginary realms, Škarnulytė makes films, installations, sculptures, drawings, and immersive time-based media that explore the entanglement of the human, the ecological, and the cosmic. Her work inhabits deep time, spanning geological epochs, submarine architectures, and post-anthropocentric futures to examine human and non-human histories. In her videos, viewers often encounter extreme or inaccessible environments: decommissioned nuclear power plants, deep-sea data storage, abandoned and forgotten underwater cities, endless desert landscapes, and uncanny natural phenomena. Inhabiting a future archeologist‘s perspective, the artist suggests that the worlds we imagine to be science fiction or fantasy are already to be found on our own planet. By combining poetic and analytic visual languages, Škarnulytė examines how infrastructures of power—military, ecological, and mythological—extend into unseen and unknowable territories of oceanic abyss, cosmic matter, and memory.

Škarnulytė has presented her work in major solo exhibitions, including at Tate St Ives (UK), Kunsthaus Graz (AT), Kunsthall Trondheim (NO), and Canal Projects (US). She has exhibited in numerous international group exhibitions, including at MoMA PS1 (US), Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (DK), Mori Art Museum (JP), and Kiasma (FI), and has participated in the Gwangju Biennale (KR), Helsinki Biennale (FI), Vilnius Biennale (LT), and the Henie Onstad Triennial for Photography and New Media (NO). She represented Lithuania at the XXII Triennale di Milano (IT) and in the Baltic Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. She is the recipient of the 2019 Future Generation Art Prize and the 2023 Ars Fennica Award.

Škarnulytė studied sculpture at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan (IT) and holds an MA from the Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art (NO). She founded and currently co-directs Polar Film Lab, a collective for analogue film practice located in Tromsø (NO) and is a member of the artist duo New Mineral Collective, together with Tanya Busse.

Emilija Škarnulytė skarnulyte.emilija@gmail.com

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Stay inspired and keep up to date with the latest news, exhibitions and projects

currently:

Solo Exhibition - Emilija Škarnulytė at Tate St Ives, 6 December - 12 April 2026
Group Exhibition - The New Orchestra, Museo della Montagna (TO), 31 October 2025 - 31 May 2026

upcoming:

Solo exhibition - Lokremise, Kunstmuseum St.Gallen (CH), August 22 – November 8, 2026
Burial

Film / 60 min / 2022

Burial invites viewer for an immersive sensorial trip into the unique and vast Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant (INPP) in Lithuania, now undergoing a decommissioning process. Cold War energy structures impact recent geopolitical processes and leave planetary threats over long periods of time. The project takes a geological approach – it reads things that compose this flat landscape as a stack of stratigraphic layers. Burial is an intertwined section through the current entanglement of identities, spatial practices, infrastructures and geological resources.

 

Director and Writer: Emilija Škarnulytė
Producers: Dagnė Vildžiūnaitė, Elisa Fernanda Pirir
Cinematographers: Eitvydas Doškus, Audrius Budrys, Adam Khalil, Emilija Škarnulytė
Composer: Gaute Barlindhaug
Editors: Mykolas Žukauskas, Darius Šilėnas
Sound Designer: Vytis Puronas
Colorist: Fredrik Harreschou
Production: Just a moment (LT), Mer Film (N)
Financiers: Creative Europe MEDIA (EU), Lithuanian Film Centre (LT), Vilnius City Municipality (LT), Nordnorsk Filmsenter (N), Frittord (N), Bergen fund (N)

Festivals
2022 Visions du Réel International Film Festival Nyon (CH)
2022 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival (CA)