Lithuania presents the visual artist and filmmaker Emilija Škarnulytė who is currently gaining wide international recognition with her hypnotic aesthetics embedded in the archeology of the Anthropocene. Her video installation Manifold and a program of events featuring seven artist‘s films, conversations, and readings events will deeply immerse visitors in an exploration of themes proposed by Triennale.
Emilija Škarnulytė’s work is positioned at the intersection of natural and man-made structures – physical, philosophical and political. In her immersive films and large-scale installations the artist evokes feelings of contemplative anxiety provoked by encounters with all that is larger than us, and larger than life – a looming climate catastrophe, natural phenomena, ideological constructions and massive architectural or scientific structures. Just as the artist dives into waters, buildings or terrains to explore, the viewer is drawn into her works through their hypnotic aesthetics, finding themselves embedded in the future archeology of the Anthropocene with all of its eco-and techno-political discourse. Although Škarnulytė's work is often presented in dialogue with topical research, it dissects the urgencies of a rapidly developing – or, possibly, unraveling – planet as something beyond the theoretical debate: a physical, unavoidable, all-encompassing situation, which no longer offers a comfortable point of view.