The installation delves into the media ecosystem of illicit publishing and dissemination of information as acts of resistance against russian oppression and cultural erasure in Lithuania. Filmed in the forest borderlands between Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, and Kaliningrad, the work employs diverse modes of witnessing – via the landscape, historical narratives, and the viewer’s perspective – to position the terrain as an active participant, facilitating the smuggling of information.

The thesis investigates repeated acts of resistance carried out through the underground partisan press in Lithuania, examining the media ecosystem – infrastructure, people, networks, and terrain – that enabled it. It traces how the forest functioned first as a tool and later as evidence of resistance. The text was published as part of the Tactical Media Reader from the Institute of Network Cultures in 2026.

This project investigates the material dimension of diplomacy through the study of gifts exchanged with the Holy See. Conducted through on-site research at the Vatican in early 2026, the work combines visits to the Vatican Museums and Apostolic Library with interviews with curators and ambassadors. It traces how objects, ranging from everyday artefacts to national symbols, embody negotiations of power, belief, and identity. In a time when traditional sources of information face growing distrust, Material Diplomacy looks to material culture as an alternative archive of global dynamics. The collection of gifted objects reveals shifting systems of value and belief, reflecting the political, religious, and colonial narratives embedded in their making and exchange. By interpreting these gifts through a design perspective, the research reframes the Vatican’s collection as both witness and agent in moments of conflict and reconciliation.

One of the research outcomes were a series of diagrams tracing the location of the political gifts and the different “characters” involved in their handling, as seen below.

The video documentation collected during our on-site visit resulted in a clip, which traces our footsteps throughout the Vatican knowledge institutions with a focus on the mediation of the gift and how it travels through hands, states, and devices. The video essay was part of the Research Night at Nieuwe Insitute in 2026.

Diplomatic gifts are more than just polite exchanges between states: they influence relationships, reveal power dynamics and expose the invisible rules that govern international relations. This Research Night will explore how objects, buildings and rituals form part of diplomatic codes, and how we can understand them in all their complexity. 

The evening is a collaboration with Pyeori Jung and Augustina Lavickaite. In their design and research project Material Diplomacy, they examine objects donated to the Vatican during moments of political conflict and change, viewing them as bearers of material, symbolic and political significance.

They will be joined by speakers Suzanne Schols, Nadim Choufi and Łukasz Stanek. In her work Polite Fictions, visual artist Suzanne Schols investigates how diplomatic gifts in the Netherlands and Europe are subject to strictly regulated forms of visibility.

Lebanese artist and editor Nadim Choufi approaches diplomacy as a physical and political practice, demonstrating how diplomatic structures influence people, landscapes and ecological systems.

Finally, Łukasz Stanek, Professor of Architecture at Taubman College, will share insights from the exhibition The Gift: Stories of Generosity and Violence in Architecture about the meaning of architecture as a gift.

How do we make sense of the sky? During the ARCUS artist-in-residence program, I looked into different readings the sky in Japan – religious, technological, political – through on-site visits to the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, the Science Museum of Map and Survey, Tokyo Daijingu Shrine, Mt Tsukuba, and the Tanabata celebration.

With this ongoing research direction I want to explore how airspaces become legible surfaces for power and control by comparing historical transcendental interpretation with contemporary geopolitical vigilance.

The Latin phrase do ut des (I give so that you might give) seems like a good way to describe the ongoing and contractual relationship between humans and the natural elements. Within this trajectory, I focus on the varying ways in which our negotiation with the element of water manifests is spaces, objects, and narratives.

Worshipped by sailors and merchants around Zeeland in the 2nd and 3rd century, Nehalennia was a goddess of protection and fertility. The Romans transported goods across the North Sea to supply their legions in England (olive oil and wine from Spain and France) as well as the ones guarding the Rhine border (grain, fish, and wool from England). As a form of insurance or bargain, sailors would promise Nehalennia altars and offerings in exchange for a safe return back home. Lost in the sea for hundreds of years due to floods and tides, the votive altars of Nehalennia reappeared off the coast of Domburg in 1650s and Colijnsplaat in 1970s and are currently in the collection of the several museums in the Netherlands and Belgium.

There is an intruiging spatial overlap between Nehalennia’s sites of worship and the modern flood infrastructure of the Deltawerken. Currently, I am in the processing of developing a new video work, which will bring the two manifestations of negotiation with water together in a singular narrative.