KAUNAS.- The 15th Kaunas Biennial, taking place in Lithuania from September 12 to November 23, 2025, announced Adomas Narkevičius as Curator for its 15th edition, titled Life After Life.
Reflecting on his appointment and the upcoming edition, Narkevičius states: “I am honoured and thrilled to collaborate with the Kaunas Biennial team in shaping its 15th edition. Kaunas Biennial’s significant role within the Baltic contemporary art scene offers a unique opportunity to present a perspective from our so-called “semi-peripheral” region—embracing its irreverent, experimental, and self-reflexive ethos.
With the trust of the Biennial’s team and within the framework of Life After Life, I look forward to developing an exhibition that engages with our time—and, more precisely, its own. My aim is for it to imaginatively address the palpable shifts in the international order and the long-held ideas surrounding contemporary art, while, above all, serving as a space of possibility for the invited artists and their visions.”
Life After Life
Life After Life will explore themes of uncertainty and transition, experimenting with the biennial as a malleable form—one capable of suspending and reorganising the established dynamics of contemporary art’s social and aesthetic fluency. Embracing fandoms of diverse artistic practices and genres, whether conventionally categorised as “contemporary art” or not, Life After Life poses a critical question: If the globalised biennial format has reached an impasse with reality, what shape might the contradictions of the present take when they are no longer wished away?
Following the Biennial’s itinerant structure, the 15th edition will, for the first time, take place in the historic Stumbras distillery, founded during the Tsarist era, and the interwar Temporary M.K. Čiurlionis Art Gallery. Alongside other locations across the city, these venues underscore Kaunas’ ongoing transformation.
Continuing its tradition of fostering new artistic production, the 15th Kaunas Biennial will feature a significant number of commissioned works, inviting artists to respond to the edition’s theme and the unique context of its venues.
“Kaunas Biennial has always been a platform for exploring the complexities of our time, for artistic experimentation, and for challenging conventions”, says Neringa Kulik, director of Kaunas Biennial. “With Life After Life, we are eager to see how Adomas Narkevičius, with his sharp curatorial vision, will utilize this platform to explore the ideas of transition and uncertainty in a way that resonates with both local and global contexts. We are confident that this edition will generate important new reflections on the contemporary moment and contribute to a dynamic dialogue within the international art community.”
The 15th edition of Kaunas Biennial will be accompanied by a satellite exhibition presenting works by Lithuanian and Italian artists as a result of international collaborations with the Lyon Biennale (France) and CHRONIQUES—the Biennale des Imaginaires Numériques (France) in 2024 and Biennale Gherdëina (Italy) in 2025-2026.
Founded in 1997, Kaunas Biennial is the largest and longest-running biannual contemporary art festival in the Baltic States. Initially focused on textile art, the Biennial has evolved to encompass a wide range of contemporary art forms, fostering international dialogue and engaging with critical social and cultural issues.
Adomas Narkevičius is currently Curator at Cell Project Space, London. His research explores nonlinear aspects of historical time, focusing on the limits of representation and the untimeliness of postwar and contemporary art in the Baltic region and beyond. Previously, he was Curator at Rupert Centre for Art, Residencies and Education, Vilnius (2016–2019). His MA dissertation, Defiant Bodies: Untimely Art in the Baltics Under Soviet Rule (UCL, 2020), received the Oxford Art Journal Prize. Curatorial projects include solo and two-person exhibitions by Coumba Samba, Josefin Arnell and Max Göran, Ksenia Pedan, Niklas Taleb, Agnė Jokšė and Anastasia Sosunova, Cudelice Brazelton IV, Peng Zuqiang, and Renée Akitelek Mboya as well as Central Eastern European and Diasporic Feminisms Research Group at Cell Project Space, We Don’t Do This: Intimacy, Norms and Fantasies in Baltic Art at MO Museum, Vilnius (2024) and Authority Incorporeal at Rupert for Baltic Triennial 14 (2021). Narkevičius has guest lectured and served as a visiting tutor at institutions such as Goldsmiths, University College London, and the Royal College of Art.
