Emilija Škarnulytės impressive video installation, t1/2, is an artistic suggestion of the imprints our ideological constructions and massive, scientific structures leaves on earth in a posthuman age. With the work, Emilija Škarnulytė won the Future Generation Art Prize in Venice in 2019. t1/2 is now shown for the first time in Denmark.
The video installation t1/2 is made up of the artist’s own camera footage, amongst other from a nuclear power plant, Etruscan tomb monuments, a neutrino observatory and a submarine base from the Cold War. The title of the work comes from physics where t1/2 denotes the half-life of a nuclear particle. The documentary footage is superimposed or made ambiguous via different layers of fiction and mythological elements. The work draws a vision of our world, seen from a future, archaeological perspective.
Škarnulytė often stages her works by manipulating and undermining the usual “black box” via mirrors and other physical structures. Her work innovatively places itself between video, sculpture and place-specific practice.
Emilija Škarnulytė (b. 1987, Vilnius) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Tromsø (2012-2013) and the Accademia de Brera in Milan (2007-2010). Her most recent group exhibitions include Hyperobjects in Ballroom Marfa, Texas; Moving Stones at the Kadist Art Foundation, Paris; and the first Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art; as well as a new commission for Bold Tendences, London. Škarnulytė also represented Lithuania at the XXII Triennale di Milano and most recently had a solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Vilnius, Lithuania. In addition, she is co-director of Polar Film Lab, Tromsø, Norway.
