3.–19.4.2026

Opening: 2.4. 18:00-20:00

Myymälä2 is pleased to present “Salt in the Mouth of the Stone”, a duo exhibition by Julija Pociūtė and Xiyao Chen. The exhibition premise unfolds as a shared artistic inquiry into land, body, and modes of sensing beyond language, originating in a collaboration in Iceland. The exhibition approaches collaboration as an embodied research practice, where knowledge emerges through proximity, listening, and sustained attention to the environment rather than through representation alone.

At the core of this multimedia exhibition lies a meaningful quest for how landscapes echo and resonate — through sonic vibrations, shifts in temperature, rhythm, and passage of time— and how human bodies, in return, become responsive instruments that react and adapt within these dynamic systems.
In the exhibition, visitors are invited to immerse themselves in enchantment and expanded states of mind. The video soundscapes and objects function as traces of encounters, shaped by movement alongside water, exposure to natural forces, and the physical effort of remaining present. Calling through hollowing and ethereal melodies of flutes made from decaying Angelicas, pulses of breath pass through matter and environment simultaneously, blurring distinctions between the human and the non-human.
The artists are committed to letting their exhibition have a life —and a will—of its own. Engaging through a sensorial experience, listening to waves crashing, feeling ice and wind, and moving through shifting terrain, becomes a method of inquiry that resists a fixed meaning. One can imagine that conversations around altered states, gut feelings, and embodied knowledge inform the works, positioning the body as a site where ecological and psychic dimensions intersect.

The title Salt in the Mouth of the Stone refers to subtle exchanges that circulate beneath dominant narratives: quiet transmissions between land and body, between collaborators, between material and memory. These dialogues do not aim for neat explanations or tidy conclusions; instead, they accumulate gradually as fragments, sensations, and lingering reverberations. “The exhibition invites both conceptual reflection and emotional response. Pociūtė and Chen draw on scenes of serenity, moments of rapture and alluring sounds to infuse solemn and mystical landscapes with a sense of spirituality and inner life.” states the curator Ramiro Camelo.

Artist bios
Julija Pociūtė is a Kaunas-based visual artist working with mixed-media installations. Her practice explores embodied ways of sensing, relating to, and coexisting with a focus on the shifting boundaries between human and non-human realities. Pociūtė is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Lapland, Finland. Her research project Embodied Forests examines how artistic and eco-somatic practices can contribute to cultural narratives that deepen human–forest interconnection and ecological awareness. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at Kai Art Centre, Tallinn; the Latvian National Museum, Riga; Gallery LEVANT, Shanghai; The Centre for Contemporary Art in Toruń, Poland; and SIM Residency, Iceland.

Xiyao Chen is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher based in London. They often work against the grain, in the expanded field across digital anthropology, queer ecology, moving images and sonic installation. They are currently nurturing an embodied practice that values care over extraction, challenging eco-social injustices by focusing on more-than-human interspecies kinship and the affective turn in ecology. Their latest collaborators include bacteria, nettles, electromagnetic feedback, soil, gossip, estuaries, forecasts, cast-iron nails, jesters, lava rocks, delays, oceanic cache, potato microcomputers, and quantum entanglements, among others. They are currently lecturing at the University of the Arts London and Royal College of Art in London.

The exhibition, curated by Ramiro Camelo, is part of Myymälä 2 Baltic Fellowship Network, a curatorial research project that promotes collaboration, kinship, and artistic exchanges between Finland and the Baltic countries.