Emilija Škarnulytė at Tate St Ives 6 December 2025 – 12 April 2026

This winter, Tate St Ives will present a major exhibition of the work of Lithuanian-born artist Emilija Skarnulyte. Working between documentary and the imaginary, Skarnulyte creates films and immersive installations that explore deep time and invisible systems, as well as power structures hidden within the cosmic and geological order. In her explorations of climate change, nuclear energy, fantasy, folklore and mythology, Škarnulytė’s work covers the poetic, personal and political.

From the perspective of a ‘future archaeologist’, Škarnulytė traverses spaces that we do not readily see, such as Cold War military bases, mining sites, neutrino observatories, decommissioned power plants and deep-sea data storage units. She reveals them to us as relics of a lost human culture, in which technological advancements have wrought a complex future laden with environmental harm and human losses. At times, Škarnulytė positions herself in some of her films as a hybrid, almost mythical creature, swimming through various bodies of water. Other works reflect on ‘dead zones’ in the sea, caused by a lack of oxygen, whether from industrial processes, or the effects of climate change.

In a deeply personal film, Aldona (2013), visitors follow Škarnulytė’s grandmother Aldona on her daily walk through Grūtas Park, a sculpture garden of Soviet-era statues in southwest Lithuania, as she touches the sculptures, tracing the past and present. In the spring of 1986, Aldona lost her vision and became permanently blind. Doctors claimed that the nerves in her eyes had been poisoned, most likely due to the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

Æqualia (2023) is the third in a trilogy of recent films of an imagined pantheon of feminine deities. Filmed in various confluences of rivers, they are places historically used as centres for extraction. In it, Škarnulytė embodies a vision of a post-human chimera – part pink-river dolphin, part-siren – swimming through the waters of the Amazon Basin. Škarnulytė glides through the six-kilometre confluence where the Rio Solimoes; milky white with suspended silts and clays from the high Andes, meets the Rio Negro; murky, black and heavy with the decay of lowland forests. The confluence, and the sight of the imagined creature mirroring its movements, infer the complexity of what is real; the past, present and future swirl of myth, the destructive forces of capital on the ecology of the region, and what lies beneath the profundity of time.

Škarnulytė spent the month of June 2025 at Porthmeor Studios in St Ives, as part of a Tate St Ives artist residency programme, where she worked on a new 16mm film, Telstar (2025). Drawing on the large number of fabled and ancient locations in Cornwall, she visited the Dry Tree, a standing stone near Goonhilly Downs, the ‘Cornish Pyramid’ in St Austell, Mên-an-Tol, the Boskednan Stone Circle and Chun Quoit, as well as the Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station; taking her across a spectrum of time from the Neolithic Period to the space age.

This exhibition at Tate St Ives will present Škarnulytė’s work in large-scale immersive environments. The architectural structures in the gallery will invite visitors to view the films from a series of different perspectives and at different scales, from the macro to the micro, alongside glass sculptures and lightboxes, showcasing the breadth of Škarnulytė’s practice, and bringing to the fore her visions of how mythology and technology can form a vibrant and transcendental force.

Notes:

Emilija Škarnulytė is supported by Tate Members.

The exhibition is curated by Anne Barlow, Director, Tate St Ives with Dara McElligott, Assistant Curator, Tate St Ives.

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Listings information

Emiljia Škarnulytė
6 December 2025 – 12 April 2026
Tate St Ives, Porthmeor Beach, St Ives TR26 1TG

March - October: Open daily 10.00 - 17.20
November - February: Open Tues - Sun 10.00 - 16.20
Please check the website for up to date opening times.

Tickets available at tate.org.uk and +44(0)20 7887 8888. Free for Members. Join at tate.org.uk/members
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About Emilija Škarnulytė

Emilija Škarnulytė is a Lithuanian-born artist and filmmaker. She most recently presented works at MoMA PS1, Palais de Tokyo, Louisiana MoMA, Villa Medici, MORI Art Museum, Kiasma, Gwangju Biennale, Helsinki Biennale, Penumbra. Her work was presented in solo exhibitions at Kunsthall Trondheim (2024) Canal Projects, NYC (2024), Kunsthaus Göttingen (2024) Ferme-Asile, Sion (2023); Kunsthaus Pasquart, Biel/Bienne (2021); Den Frie, Copenhagen (2021); National Gallery of Vilnius (2021); Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2017); Contemporary Art Centre CAC of Vilnius (2015). Prizes awarded to her include the 2023 Ars Fennica Award and the 2019 Future Generation Art Prize. She represented Lithuania at the XXII Triennale di Milano and participated in the Baltic Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. She has films in the collections of the Centre Pompidou, Kadist Foundation, Kiasma, Fondazione in between Art and Film, IFA, HAM, FRAC Corsica, LNMA, MO Museum, and private collections. Her works have been screened at Tate Modern and Serpentine Gallery in London, Centre Pompidou in Paris, MoMA in New York, and numerous film festivals, including Oberhausen, Visions du Réel, Rotterdam, Busan, among others. 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 the artist duo New Mineral Collective.

About Tate St Ives

Opened in 1993 and expanded in 2017, Tate St Ives explores the area’s unique role in the story of modern art, provides a platform for cutting-edge contemporary artists from around the world, and runs a programme of events and projects developed for and with the town of St Ives. It also manages the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden and is the only Tate gallery to have a dedicated Artist Residency programme. Tate St Ives was awarded Art Fund Museum of the Year 2018, the UK’s most prestigious museum award. Find out more at tate.org.uk/visit/tate-st-ives