Eternal Return

An immersive cinematic environment, Emilija Škarnulytė's exhibition Eternal Return is a meditation on the ruins and possibilities of humanity as seen across the infinite expanse of time. On large-scale screens, we move through the chambers of caverns and temples, witnessing it all caught in a cycle of eternal return from life to death to rebirth. A snake crawls through nuclear reactors into a burial chamber. Deep-sea mining companies trawl the ocean floor amid coccolithophore plankton sinking to the bottom, carrying carbon with them. Incandescent jellyfish drift and dance through the dark waters. A mirrored black liquid ceiling reflects our actions back to us. A future beyond reckoning drifts into view, where uranium is a clock ticking into the eons and our advanced technology has become wreckage at the bottom of the ocean. Female force, pleasure, and the ecstatic offer us a view of a rare path into the beyond.

Emilija Škarnulytė (b. Vilnius, Lithuania 1987) is an artist and filmmaker. Winner of the 2019 Future Generation Art Prize, her solo exhibition Chambers of Radiance recently opened at the Pinchuk Art Centre in Kiev. Škarnulytė represented Lithuania at the XXII Triennale di Milano and was included in the Baltic Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Biennial of Architecture. She has had solo exhibitions at CAC, Vilnius and Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, and has participated in group presentations at Ballroom Marfa, Seoul Museum of Art, Kadist Foundation, and the First Riga Biennial.