CARMEN

A video installation by Ieva Lygnugarytė

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 will premiere in Venice, alongside the 61st Art Biennale 2026.








Ieva Lygnugarytė (b. 1998) is an artist and researcher working with memory, time, ethics, paradox, and urban space. She is currently based in New York, NY, and holds a Master's in Design Studies in Narratives from Harvard University. Her current research project, produced in collaboration with Meral Karacaoğlan, Carmen: Utopias of Belonging, traces forgotten entanglements between European history, animality, and the politics of taming. She is part of the artist duo CASE.

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


The video is presented at the Oratorio dei Crociferi in Venice, a historic religious site shaped by centuries of passage and encounter. Tucked away from the main Biennale venues, the location reinforces the project’s focus on in/visibility, marginality, and access. Who is seen? Who remains peripheral? How is cultural value assigned?

These questions extend into the present. The Białowieża Forest, home to the European bison, now lies along the contested border between Belarus and Poland. A region defined by movement, control, and exclusion. The work draws a connection between this contemporary geography and the earlier failed attempt to enter the cultural center of Europe.