Deep Dive

If you plunge your face into cold water, your heart rate will lower, blood will be redirected to your vital organs, and stored red blood cells will be released into your system. These instinctive responses, designed to conserve oxygen and allow you to hold your breath for longer, are found in all mammals, an evolutionary hangover that speaks to our ancient, shared roots connecting us to our aquatic ancestors. It reminds us that all life began in the oceans.

The mammalian dive reflex, which is particularly strong among marine mammals and human babies under six months, is an important reference point for Lithuanian artist and filmmaker Emilija Škarnulytė. A keen swimmer and trained freediver, she regularly dives vertically into the depths of the ocean without the assistance of oxygen cylinders, pushing the boundaries of human endurance.

Several of Škarnulytė’s films feature her swimming in rivers and seas, often embodying a mermaid. Part-human, part-fish, the mermaid is one of humanity’s most ancient mythological figures, with versions found in almost every culture around the world. For Škarnulytė, the mermaid represents a powerful hybrid between human and animal, embodying a slippery state of inbetweenness.

In Æqualia 2023, the artist swims through the Encontro das Águas (the Meeting of the Waters) in Brazil – the confluence of the Rio Solimões and Rio Negro, which forms the beginnings of the Amazon. One river, originating from the high mountain slopes and suspended with silt and clay, is churned to a milky white. It rubs up almost impossibly against the slower, black flow of the Rio Negro, which has wound its way through the forested lowlands and is thick with decayed plant matter. Viewed from above, Škarnulytė’s shimmering body traces the definite line between the two, sometimes almost lost from view in the chalky stream, sometimes starkly visible against the darker waters. The mermaid acts as a go-between for these two powerful bodies of water, while also being irresistibly borne along by their turbulent interplay. She becomes a link back to that cross-species, ancestral aquatic heritage, a glimpse into deep time.

Aphotic Zone 2022, set in the pitch-black regions of the Pacific seamounts off Costa Rica – where less than one per cent of sunlight penetrates – imbues this underwater world with a cosmic atmosphere. Comet-like silver fish float eerily among gleaming, starry specks, connecting the depths of the ocean to the depths of space; a reminder, perhaps, that just as all living beings share watery evolutionary origins, all the matter in our cells is ultimately formed from ancient stardust.

This expansive view of time and space is characteristic of Škarnulytė, who works from the microscopic to the bodily to the cosmic in scale. Throughout her films, the mermaid is also posed as a future archaeologist, examining our present time from thousands of years in the future. Combining her documentary filmic style with speculative fiction, Škarnulytė asks how future generations might see our contemporary society, particularly when faced with ruins that evidence our wars and acts of environmental damage.

Škarnulytė’s interest in ruins stems in part from her experiences of growing up in Lithuania during the final years of the Cold War, when she saw the behemoth of the USSR falling apart around her, witnessing the accelerated pace at which Soviet institutions and infrastructures were dismantled and abandoned. These appear in several of her films, including Sirenomelia 2018, in which she swims through a disused submarine base in the Arctic, and Burial 2022, which includes shots of a python slithering over the abandoned controls of the decommissioned Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant in Lithuania.

Such nuclear sites have played an important role in the artist’s life and work. Aldona 2013 tells the story of Škarnulytė’s grandmother, who became permanently blind, probably as a result of the Chernobyl disaster. It follows the titular Aldona around Grūtas Park, a sculpture garden of Soviet-era monuments near her home, which lies near the border between Lithuania and Belarus – a politically tense area marking the limits of both the NATO alliance and the European Union.

In the gallery, the film is installed under a ceiling laden with the many medicinal herbs that grow in this region better known for being the site of a thick red line on political maps. By focusing on these small, humble-looking plants, Aldona draws out a nuanced narrative that speaks to the poisonous fallout of nuclear mismanagement and aggressive nation-building, but also to the potential for healing found in the more-than-human world.

Despite the cosmic scale of the artist’s subjects, her films remain grounded in the body – in gestures, breath and the tactile rhythm of movement underwater. This emphasis on embodied experience invites us into her immersive visual realm and asks us to examine the myriad relationships between ourselves and the forces that mould our lives – from evolutionary developments and rivers to data centres and political entities.

Visitors to Škarnulytė’s exhibition at Tate St Ives will see fragments of several films at once, carefully choreographed to tell a complex, multi-stranded story that touches simultaneously on ancient mythologies, nuclear technologies, fictional futures and current ecological concerns. By bringing her filmic works together in this way, the artist takes viewers on a speculative exploration of alternative ways of living, re-imagining our relationships to other species, environments and mythologies.

Škarnulytė repeatedly invites us to take a deep breath and follow her beneath the surface of the water. Cold-faced and wet-nosed, we can join her as she glides between phenomena that might appear unconnected, yet are revealed to be deeply intertwined. Together, perhaps, we can develop a new sensitivity – a way of seeing the world differently.

^{Emilija Škarnulytė, Tate St Ives, until 12 April 2026}

^{Anna Souter is a writer based in Bradford-on-Avon with an interest in the intersections between contemporary art and ecology.}

^{Supported by Tate Members.}