Charred Horizons: Spatializing Future Seas
I am a Lithuanian interdisciplinary artist and spatial practitioner based in the Netherlands. My practice combines sculpture, installation, material research, and environmental inquiry to investigate the relationships between people, landscapes, and the ecological systems that sustain them.
Working primarily with reclaimed materials—including timber, steel, glass, stone, and organic matter—I create site-responsive installations that transform scientific, historical, and environmental research into physical experiences. Rather than producing autonomous objects, I am interested in constructing spaces that invite visitors to engage with environmental processes through movement, scale, sound, and material presence.
My recent work has explored forest ecosystems, coastal environments, circular material economies, and the hidden infrastructures that connect humans with the natural world. I often collaborate with local landscapes and communities, incorporating field research, mapping, and traditional craft techniques to develop projects rooted in specific places while addressing broader ecological questions.
I hold an MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki and have participated in exhibitions and residencies across Europe. These experiences have strengthened my interest in interdisciplinary collaboration and research-led practice.
I see architecture not only as buildings but as a way of shaping relationships between bodies, materials, and environments. Through temporary interventions and adaptive spatial installations, I seek to make invisible ecological processes tangible and encourage new ways of perceiving our shared future.
I am particularly interested in collaborating across disciplines, adapting projects to different contexts, and developing experimental approaches to regenerative spatial practice, public engagement, and environmental storytelling.
Project change is frequently communicated through cold, detached formats: graphs, percentages, and abstract deadlines. This data-heavy approach creates psychological distance, failing to evoke urgency. Charred Horizons bridges this gap. As a sculptor, I use physical materiality and structural layout to democratize climate data, transforming clinical global projections into a visceral, localized spatial experience that visitors can physically navigate.The project blends data mapping, traditional craft, and circular economy principles. Using regional geographic information system (GIS) data, the installation is arranged as an interactive, walk-through labyrinth of vertical timber posts that replicate the exact contour lines of the host site's topography. Rejecting extractive practices, the work utilizes 100% heavy timber salvaged from local demolition sites, acting as a temporary carbon sink. The upper sections of the timber are carbonized using Shou Sugi Ban, a traditional, chemical-free preservation technique. Here, the stark black char line acts as a data marker. It is meticulously aligned across the installation to represent the exact projected sea-level rise for that specific geographic location.The most successful aspect of the work is its spatialized narrative. At higher-elevation entrances, the charred line sits low to the earth as a subtle undercurrent. As visitors descend into lower-elevation coastal zones, the carbonized wood rises dramatically above their heads. The abstract concept of a 1.5°C temperature rise ceases to be a headline; it becomes a claustrophobic, eye-level barrier. Human bodies must measure the scale of future loss against their own proportions.Charred Horizons is an adaptable architectural framework. If hosted in Barcelona, it will map Mediterranean tides. In an inland river basin, it can map floodplains. Future evolution will involve community workshops to co-source and char timber, turning fabrication into public climate activism.