Mykolas Valantinas: Father and film premiere

Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) in Vilnius, together with its branch Sapieha Palace, presents two projects featuring the artist Mykolas Valantinas, curated by Povilas Gumbis. 

Vilnius-based artist Mykolas Valantinas works in video, photography, and installation. A graduate of Vilnius University and ECAL, he has exhibited internationally and received the JCDecaux Prize Audience Award in 2023.

Mykolas Valantinas: Father

The starting point for the artist’s first solo presentation is the archive of drawings and prints by his father, artist Rytis Valantinas, which the son transforms using artificial intelligence. The filter of new technologies brings to the surface the contradictory dynamics between father and son: a mixture of adoration and a ‘desire’ to appropriate or ‘take over’ his father’s work. AI-generated interpolations of the archive are presented alongside another essential offshoot of the father’s creative oeuvre—money.

Rytis Valantinas authored some of the first banknotes of independent Lithuania—the talonas and litas. He also created a 1000-litas note that never entered circulation. The exhibition approaches money in a twofold manner: as a political, cultural and economic symbol—the heritage of an entire nation—and as a family relic, laden with memories and claims of inheritance. The deconstruction of the 1000-litas note into its constituent elements, the components needed for counterfeiting, becomes a creative gesture that binds personal and mythological worlds, exposes the mechanisms of value creation, and blurs the boundaries between original and copy, reality and fiction.

Lithuanian premiere of Valantinas’ film Lullaby’s Fault (2025). Artists’ Film International 2025: Dream States at Sapieha Palace

Sapieha Palace, participating for the second consecutive year in Artists’ Film International (AFI), has selected Lullaby’s Fault, a video work by Mykolas Valantinas, as its entry for AFI’25. The film explores the interior of a fractured and incoherent psyche. Set in rural Lithuania, it follows twin brothers whose vivid imaginations turn innocent play into violence. Rather than depicting violent acts directly, the film shifts its focus to their aftermath. Alternating between past and present, it explores the surreal, fragmented logic of a mind struggling to process trauma and find healing.

Sapieha Palace will host the Lithuanian premiere of Lullaby’s Fault on November 27 at 7pm. The evening will also feature a live performance by Antanas Lučiūnas and Virgile Guillaud, titled Quiet Life, an ongoing musical project unfolding through collaborations across sound, image, and performance. Using the band as a vessel for artistic production, Quiet Life functions as an instrument for collective making.

Artists’ Film International (AFI) was established in 2008 by the Whitechapel Gallery in London, and since its inception has seen 32 international venues collaborate. It operates as an alternative, lateral programme that exemplifies non-hierarchical, borderless and collaborative curatorial models.

Dream States, the 18th edition of AFI, curated by Forma with 16 cultural institutions across four continents, foregrounds artists who disrupt linear time, blur fact and fiction, and navigate the boundaries between memory, myth, and fantasy to reimagine the world anew. 

The selected films will be screened continuously from 28 to 30 November during the palace’s opening hours. Admission is free. For more information, visit Sapieha Palace online.