Emilija Škarnulytė: The Goddess Helix

The Goddess Helix weaves together a multi-year cycle of ongoing artwork by Emilija Škarnulytė to create the first comprehensive survey of this series. Comprising film, sculpture, and holographic imagery, the exhibition highlights three interlaced cinematic installations drawing on the research of Marija Gimbutas (1921-1994), a Lithuanian anthropologist who interpreted the prominence of goddess and serpent motifs in Neolithic art. Within this film series, Škarnulytė embodies a mythic guise—part-human, part-aquatic animal—guiding spectators through the currents of contemporary existence. Two pivotal artworks bookend this series: The Code (2024), a newly commissioned twinned-animation portraying pythons metamorphosing from sigils into a genetic sequence, and Aldona (2013), a poignant homage to the artist’s grandmother, who is a foundational pillar of Škarnulytė’s own journey. Exploring themes of adaptation, survival, and myth, these collected stories seek to inspire new means of navigating environmental and social crises amidst growing disillusionment.

Oracles, though elusive, serve as guides throughout the exhibition, offering as many meandering paths as they do answers. The paradoxes they raise seem imaginary, but as the poet Muriel Rukeyzer noted: “the universe is made of stories, not atoms”. Politics and science also rest on riddles, and their own lore directly conditions the lived lives of individuals. In turn, Škarnulytė’s fabled narratives shadow and reconceive the authority of such “atoms”, and calls for us to rediscover ourselves in how we care for, perceive, and exist within the planet, its ecosystems, and the cosmos. The narrative device of her folkloric creatures and guides adeptly performs as a vector, delicately peeling back the myths surrounding the stories we create and rely on to navigate life.