Eglė Budvytė. animism sings anarchy
Padiglione Lituania

For the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia in 2026, Eglė Budvytytė will represent Lithuania, exhibiting a new multi-channel film installation animism sings anarchy. The work will be shown at La Fucina del Futuro, Castello 5063/B, 30122 Venice and a preview of the exhibition will take place on Wednesday 6 May at 1pm for media and guests.

The project has been commissioned by the Lithuanian National Museum of Art under Commissioner Lolita Jablonskienė, Director of the National Gallery of Art, a subdivision of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art. It is being curated by Louise O'Kelly, a London based independent curator and founding Director of Block Universe, a leading international performance art festival and commissioning body. Eglė Budvytytė is an artist based in Vilnius and Amsterdam working at the intersection between the visual and performing arts. Her practice, spanning song, video and performance, explores the persuasive power of collectivity, vulnerability and permeable relationships between bodies, audiences and the environment.

Inscribed on 16mm, animism sings anarchy is a performative and poetic attempt to translate archaeological research and materials into songs, feelings, movement, and altered states. The film draws on the late Lithuanian anthropologist and archaeologist Marija Gimbutas's research into Neolithic matrilineal, animist societies—a source of inspiration for artists, academics, and environmentalists associated with second-wave feminism. Filming to date has taken place in the southeast of Italy near Grotta Scaloria, the site of a Neolithic water cult where Gimbutas undertook excavations in the late 1970s. Building on her practice of working through the body and with place, Budvytytė structures the film's scenes around museum interiors and an Apulian coastline populated by ancient caves and watery burial grounds. Shaped by these places, the sequences unfold like ritual movements: a form of animist prayer tethering the choreography to natural landforms and remnants of the past. Facsimiles of anthropomorphic deities – rendered as 3-D printed figurines and modest photocopies – offer a devotional locus for tender, trembling choreographies: gestures that suggest states of trance, ecstasy and surrender.

Louise O'Kelly, Curator, said "I am honoured to work with Eglė in the creation of this major new work, one of her most ambitious and significant pieces to date. Filming on 16mm for the first time, animism sings anarchy imbues archaeological artefacts, polyphonous melodies and trembling choreographies with anarchic possibility. Through the process of working with her community of creative collaborators, I feel something special has been brewing: a much-needed medicine for our times."

Lolita Jablonskienė, Commissioner, said, "The Lithuanian National Museum of Art is delighted to share the news that Eglė Budvytytė will present new work for the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. One of the artist's most ambitious works to date, it draws upon ideas and theories across time and geography and brings to the surface forgotten or suppressed connections between the visible and the infinite"

Lithuania has participated in the International Art and Architecture Exhibitions of La Biennale di Venezia since 1999. The Lithuanian Pavilion has been awarded a special mention four times, and in 2019 it won the Golden Lion for Sun and Sea (Marina).... read the rest of the article»