Emilija Škarnulytė, Æqualia, 2023. Courtesy of the artist. Commissioned by Canal Projects and the 14th Gwangju Biennale

Waves are lapping everywhere you look. Outside, the Atlantic Ocean stretches in front of Tate St Ives over an overcast sandy beach. Inside, multi-channel films of life-giving oceans and rivers are arranged in the gallery’s temple-like space. Emilija Škarnulytė’s works occupy two main gallery rooms in a major eponymous exhibition contending with personal memory and collective history, both understood in expansive terms.

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The Lithuania-born artist’s ambitious work is devoted to deep time, speculative archaeology and mythologies. The show starts with Riparia 2023, a photo representing a character emulating the image of a female masked divinity, half human, half reptilian. This sets the tone for “Emilija Škarnulytė,” which focuses on the complex exploration of time and narratives and how strata—geological, mythological and political—intertwine in that meaning-making process.

Aldona (2013) is a short film documenting ritual, the passage of time and political legacies in sensory terms. Aldona, the artist’s grandmother, lost her eyesight during the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear fallout. She lives at the border with Belarus in her traditional home and garden (recently plucked medicinal herbs hang from the room’s ceiling). In the film, remembering and forgetting coalesce into two sides of the same affliction—a familiar dance of the mind for the Homo post-Sovieticus. Without sight, Aldona relies on other senses, including hearing and touch. In some of the film’s most moving scenes, the radio plays ancient tales in her kitchen; in others, Aldona’s fingers explore the face of a gigantic Lenin statue in a sculpture park.