Arts at CERN

Working between documentary and speculative fiction, her films and immersive installations take viewers through decommissioned nuclear power plants, deep-sea data storage units, forgotten underwater cities, and uncanny natural phenomena.

Emilija Škarnulytė is a Lithuanian-born artist and filmmaker. Her practice is rooted in the exploration of infrastructures that mediate between the visible and the invisible, the human and the post-human, the present and the deep temporal. These include nuclear power plants undergoing decommissioning, deep-sea prototypes of data storage systems, neutrino observatories and geological formations shaped by technological intervention. The topics addressed range from the cosmic and geological to the ecological and political.

Škarnulytė is the recipient of the 2026 edition of Collide Stockholm, Arts at CERN’s international residency award, in partnership with the Nobel Prize Museum.

Recent solo shows include exhibitions at Kunsthaus Graz, Tate St Ives, Kunsthall Trondheim, Canal Projects, Kunsthaus Göttingen and Kunsthaus Pasquart. Her work has also been included in exhibitions at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Palais de Tokyo, Villa Medici, MORI Art Museum, Kiasma, Gwangju Biennale, and the Helsinki Biennale.

Škarnulytė won the 2023 Ars Fennica Award and the 2019 Future Generation Art Prize, awarded by the PinchukArtCentre. Her works are part of public and private collections such as Centre Pompidou, Kadist Foundation, Kiasma, Fondazione In Between Art and Film, Helsinki Art Museum, FRAC Corsica, Lithuanian National Museum of Art (LNMA), and MO Museum.