Emilija Škarnulytė

What will our ruins say about us? In Burial, Emilija Škarnulytė explores what we leave behind - not just as humans, but as a civilisation shaping the planet’s future in radioactive time.

Presented inside the Quarterhouse auditorium, the film plays on a large screen, mirrored on the floor below. Sculptures fill the space, creating an immersive setting where past, present and future blur.

The work moves through sites of memory and irreversible change: from the fossil-rich cliffs of Folkestone to the decaying control room of Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant in Lithuania - Chernobyl’s twin. A python slides through the abandoned core, a symbol of eternal return and the dangers we try to bury.

Shot from the imagined view of a future archaeologist, the film uncovers the physical and emotional weight of what we leave behind. It shifts between ancient tombs, sunken cities and modern reactors, asking how we attempt to contain the uncontainable.

Škarnulytė’s lens lingers on slow dismantling - bolts loosened, wires removed, a radioactive legacy unbuilt. Nearby, at Dungeness, a silent power station stands behind shingle and ghost villages, where ammonites once swam and now crumble to dust.

Burial is a meditation on time, power and grief. Through reflection - both visual and philosophical - Škarnulytė invites us to witness the deep past and deep future converging, and to ask what traces of ourselves will remain.

Burial is viewable onscreen at the Quarterhouse Auditorium. Screenings take place every hour, on the hour, from 11am until 5pm, lasting approximately 60 minutes.

Emilija Škarnulytė is a Lithuanian-born artist and filmmaker whose work explores deep time, ecological collapse, and the intersection of science and myth. Moving between documentary and speculative fiction, her immersive films and installations examine human and non-human histories, often set in extreme or hidden environments like decommissioned nuclear sites and submerged cities.

Škarnulytė has recently presented works at MoMA PS1, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, MORI Art Museum, Kiasma, Gwangju Biennale, Helsinki Biennale, Vilnius Biennale, Henie Onstad Triennale, and Penumbra. Recent solo exhibitions include Kunsthall Trondheim, Canal Projects (NYC, 2024), and Kunsthaus Göttingen (2024).

She is the winner of the 2023 Ars Fennica Award and the 2019 Future Generation Art Prize. She represented Lithuania at the XXII Triennale di Milano and the Baltic Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. Škarnulytė’s films are held in major collections including the Centre Pompidou, Kadist Foundation, Kiasma, and Fondazione In Between Art and Film.

A solo exhibition at Tate St Ives will open in October 2025. She works and lives nomadically.

With additional support from Lithuanian Culture Institute