Carmen
4K Video, 22:15 min.
2026

Carmen (2026) is a video installation by artist Ieva Lygnugarytė (b. 1998) that reactivates a little-known story from the early sixteenth century.

In 1523, the poet Nicolaus Hussovianus wrote A Poem about the Size, the Ferocity, and the Hunting of the Bison. As a diplomatic gesture, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania intended to send this poem together with a straw-stuffed European bison to Pope Leo X. The attempt sought to introduce a peripheral European region to the cultural center of Renaissance Rome. Alas, the gift never fulfilled its purpose. The pope died before it arrived, leaving both the poem and the animal unreceived as intended. The episode faded from historical memory.

Lygnugarytė’s film reinterprets this moment by reviving the poet as a figure seeking recognition beyond the margins of North-Eastern Europe. As the work unfolds, he gradually transforms into the bison itself, a shift that may imagine a desire to embody the symbol meant to represent his region, and to secure a place within a canon that excluded him.

Presented within Carmen: Utopias of Belonging, curated by Meral Karacaoğlan (b. 1997), Carmen premiered in Venice, alongside the 61st Art Biennale 2026.

Team

Artist
Ieva Lygnugarytė

Executive Producer
Meral Karacaoğlan

Actors
Paulius Janušonis
Maja Wittrup

Sound Design
Miša Skalskis

Voice Edit
Xavier Muchel

Colorist
Julija Steponaitytė

Composer
Oswald Huỳnh

Violoncello
Frederick Winterson

Costume Development
Thomas Trenchard

Photos: Julian Blum. Installation view at the Oratorio dei Crociferi, Venice, Italy

More information: https://carmenbisontis.com
Interview (LT): Kaip LDK dovanojo popiežiui stumbrą: lietuvė Venecijoje pristatė išskirtinį kūrinį, Lithuanian National Television, 2026

CASE:

CASE:
Some Type Armor
4K Video, 13:43 min.
2025

Some Type Armor began as a poem that attempted to communicate the unutterable sensation of living through our present historical moment while recognizing the nonlinear patterns of historical violence as it reoccurs habitually. The unnamed woman in our video reckons with her memories of being institutionally indoctrinated to instrumentalize the use of proper English; as if the mastery of a language is a means to achieve higher status; a technology of institutional mobility, and leverage. The subject meditates on the use of eloquent speech, as a type of armor, as a form of protection, as a heap of thing worn, an instrument, a tool, a thing carried.

CASE (Excerpt):

CASE:
Wax Lyrical
4K Video, 12:21 min.
2025

CASE:

Felt my empty contacts,

CASE:
Felt my empty contacts,
Sound Installation
2024

More info: LINK

CASE:

CASE:
Rumors: September 16, 2024
Audio Surround Installation
2024

More info: LINK

CASE:

Sideworks: Nida, Lithuania

CASE:
Sideworks: Nida, Lithuania
Mixed media installation; performance
2023

Installation view at KRATC Recycling Center, Nida, Lithuania. Sideworks: Nida, Lithuania is a part of group exhibition Obsession, curated by Anastasia Sosunova.
Press release

CASE:

Sideworks: Nida, Lithuania

CASE:
Sideworks is a series of public interventions by the artist duo Case that addresses the contradictory nature of publicly owned private spaces, the sovereignity of space in general. In their spatial gestures around KRATC waste collection site in Neringa, Case continues to work with patches of land that have limited access. One part of their work engages with the picturesque landscape of fenced of hills of recycled waste where they place tagged-over ads for new real estate developments.

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In the second part of their work, Case incorporates yellow vests-suggested by the waste collection site as a safety measure for the exhibition audience - and in doing so, instrumentalises this high-visibility camouflage as an opportunity to contemplate the nature of access. During the opening of the exhibition, the duo’s collective performance invites all of the participants in the event to wear vests.

- Exhibition curator Anastasia Sosunova

CASE (Film still):

Whir

CASE:
Whir

CASE:
Whir
4K Video, 5:44 min
2023

In Whir, two friends converse by telling each other about activities they engaged in while in New York City. There is no pictorial proof of the actions taken by the two speakers; only blurry visuals of Times Square evoke a sense of dreaminess, prompting questions about which stories in the city are considered more important, which ones persist as rumors, and which ones ultimately become documented history.

Whir is part of a larger ongoing series of works that aims to investigate people’s movements, traces and stories they consciously or unconsciously leave behind in the city.

Full video: LINK

CASE:
Sideworks: Manor House

CASE:

Sideworks: Manor House

CASE:
Sideworks: Manor House
Performance
2023

Installation view at Žeimiai Manor House, Žeimiai, Lithuania. Performance Sideworks: Manor House is a part of Case solo exhibition Angsty Places, curated by Eglė Ambrasaitė.

CASE:

Winter Garden
Two-screen video installation, 9:15 min and 12:40 min
2023

More info: LINK

CASE:
As global temperatures rise drastically, shortening skiing seasons each year, artificial snow is produced to extend the winter sports season and sustain capital flow despite climate change. This manufactured reality sustains an illusion of winter bliss, particularly for wealthy regions. The snowboarder material, sourced online, responds to an internet trend, whereas CASE envisions her dressed appropriately for an ever-warming winter.

Winter Garden critiques how climate denial manifests through artificial snow production at ski resorts—a consequence of hedonistic desire.

Archive:

Author Unknown
If you are the author of this notebook, please contact me.

CASE:

Play(time)sheet

CASE:

Play(time)sheet

CASE:
Play(time)sheet
4K Video installation, 23:38 min
2023

Play(time)sheet is a multimedia video installation that shows of two art workers carrying out typical office tasks until their disillusionment with work reaches a critical apex of complete apathy.

The work week is managed, and dictated by a boss who looms over both workers via mandatory zoom meetings. An audio track loops throughout the work week reflecting the inner turmoil, and poetic thoughts of both workers.

The thought processes, and labor performed during the week reflect the psychological confinement of the office space, and an increasing sense of creative urgency.

Full video: LINK

Archive:

2021

Archive:

Flo

Crayon on paper
2018

Dead End: Friends In Danger
Multimedia Installation
2022

Presented by Videograms and SLA Art Space

Dead End

Poster Graphic Design Marek Voida

Dead End

Mixed media installation
2022

Presented by Videograms and SLA Art Space

Dead End is a light, and sound installation by Ieva Lygnugarytė. Dead End seeks to address obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), something experienced by both humans, and dogs. Humans bite their nails, while dogs compulsively chase their own tail, unable to recognize it as a part of their body.

In Dead End the dog finally catches its tail; the act is suspended, but the residual angst remains. The sound piece featured in the installation was created using pre-recorded audio of footsteps. Sounds of walking, and running merge into a trance-like state that loops back and forth between subtly modulated intenities. In Dead End Ieva explores notions of linear thinking, progress (A leads to B) and how these ideas are often misleading, functioning merely as a means to an end. She employs iconographic imagery to induce feelings of anxiety. Could the cyclic nature of the dog biting its tail be seen merely as a repetitive action or a way out of dead end capitalism?

Dead End is accompanied by another work titled “night creature” - a bed sheet duvet cover set, produced by Videograms (created by Vladas Suncovas, Marek Voida, Viktorija Šiaulytė and Monika Lipšic). The duvet cover set was created as a conceptual form of bedroom architecture; using personal space, as a form of domestic teleportation. The desire to be transported into cinematic, virtual and imaginary worlds is cultivated by manipulating everyday objects relevant to contemporary dwelling. A diagramtic print functions as a map funneling ideas innovations, and teleportation channels represented through science-fiction, pornography, streaming devices, and images of visionary technology.

While Ieva Lygnugarytė’s work responds to the capitalist incentive to overproduce for the sake of material wealth, the bed sheet reacts to pandemic era circumstances in which prolonged confinement led to escapism via entertainment technology. Both works speak about exhaustion, fatigue and the search for an exit. Whether it’s a dead end in a state of suspension, or living vicariously through moving images, and temporary shelters, the viewers may find themselves situated in a room where two unlike portals open up.

Videograms is a recurring festival of video art, artists’ films and moving image practices organized in Vinius, Lithuania. It often presents contemporary artists and their work which appears outside the conventional film market. “Videogram” literally means “writing with video”, it took the title from the film by Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujică Videograms of a Revolution, documenting the events in Romania in late 1980s. See more on videograms.online.

Dead End

List of artworks:

Dead End
Ieva Lygnugarytė
Mixed media (light and sound installation)
Size variable
2021

Hesitant Chair
Ieva Lygnugarytė
Steel chair
2022

Videograms Bed Sheet
Vladas Suncovas, Marek Voida, Viktorija Šiaulytė, Monika Lipšic
Cotton, inkjet print, edition of 100.
2021

CASE:
Another Train Video

CASE:
Another Train Video
HD Video, 8:49 min
2022

Full video: LINK

Archive:

Deer and House Composition 1
60 x 40 cm / 23’6 x 16 inches
Oil on canvas
2021

An Answer to the Invitation from 2017
Visual poem
2021

An Answer to the Invitation 2017 is an ecofeminist visual poem that reinterprets Robert Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions (1980), transforming the emotional spectrum into painted flower petals that are counted through the pages. Each petal symbolizes a specific emotion, exploring its varying intensities. The text intertwines themes of androgenicity and apocalyptic anxieties, reflecting on survival instincts and the politics of reproduction.

Read full visual poem on www.hardtocare.net

Archive:

Deer and House Composition 2
2020

Party

Party

Two-screen HD videos
Sizes variable
2020

Party is a two screen video piece depicting the fast life and death of mayflies. After a group act of reproduction above the river water, the male isolates the female to ensure that no others male mates with her. She flies to the water and lays her eggs and then dies. This phenomenon was filmed in Lessac, France.

Party was exhibited and presented together with art book An Ode to Me and My Unborn Children.

Installation view at the Žeimiai Manor House during Enchanted Landscapes group exhibition (September 2020), Lithuania.

Installation view: Party

An Ode to Me and My Unborn Children

Project Modesty
HD Video, 10:56 min
Ieva Lygnugaryte and Kathryn Frey

Desire is a fundamental condition of embodiment—hunger, thirst, and longing mark the human experience from birth. Yet within frameworks of religious fundamentalism, these drives are subject to moral scrutiny, generating a persistent tension between bodily instinct and doctrinal discipline.

Project Modesty interrogates this tension through symbolic motifs—skin, water, bread, wine—and excerpts from American evangelical sermons. Through these materials, the work explores how Christian morality encodes the flesh, disciplines the ego, and constructs the self as a site of both purity and transgression.

2019

Archive:

Medusa in Stone
Exhibition Plan at Musée de Cluny, Paris, France
Ieva Lygnugarytė and Elena Marshall
2019

Archive:

Angel
2018

Archive:

Forks
2018

Archive:

2018