Gediminas Urbonas is an artist, researcher, educator, and co-founder—with Nomeda Urbonas—of Urbonas Studio, an interdisciplinary research practice that facilitates exchange among diverse nodes of knowledge production and artistic practice, in pursuit of projects that transform civic spaces and collective imaginaries. In collaboration with experts from various cultural and professional fields, these projects develop practice-based research models, merging materials and techniques from urbanism, new media, social science, and pedagogy to critically address the transformation of civic space and ecology. Urbonas has established an international reputation for socially engaged and interdisciplinary practice, exploring the conflicts and contradictions posed by economic, social, and political conditions in contexts undergoing transformation. Urbonas uses the art platform to render public spaces for interaction and engagement with social groups, evoking local communities and encouraging their cultural and political imagination.
Urbonas has exhibited internationally, including at the São Paulo (twice), Berlin, Moscow (twice), Lyon, Gwangju, Busan, Taipei, Kaunas, and Helsinki Biennales, the Folkestone Triennial, as well as in Manifesta 4 and Documenta 11 exhibitions. Solo presentations include the Venice Biennale, MACBA in Barcelona, and the National Gallery of Art in Vilnius. His work has been recognized with numerous high-level grants and residencies, including the Lithuanian National Prize for Culture and Arts (2007), the Prize for Best International Artist at the Gwangju Biennale (2006), the Prize for the National Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2007), and the Silver Medal for Contributions to Liberal Arts Education from Vytautas Magnus University (2024).
Urbonas is co-founder of the JUTEMPUS interdisciplinary art program (1993), the first independent artist-led initiative in Lithuania; Vilnius Interdisciplinary Lab for Media Art (VILMA); the VOICE, a net based publication on media culture (www.balsas.cc); he is co-founders of the Transaction Archive and co-director of the Pro-test Lab Archive.
His writings on artistic research as a form of intervention into social and political crisis have been published in Devices for Action (MACBA Press, 2008) and Villa Lituania (Sternberg Press, 2008). He co-edited Public Space? Lost and Found (MIT Press, 2017), a volume that brings together artists, planners, theorists, and historians to examine the complex interrelations between public space, its uses, and the roles that public art plays within it.
Urbonas’s five-year research project Zooetics explored the potential to engage with the noetics and poetics of non-human life within the context of planetary ecological imbalance. The project concluded in 2018 with a symposium at MIT and led to a new research initiative, Climate Visions.
In 2018, Urbonas co-curated The Swamp School, a future learning environment commissioned for the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale. Their co-edited volume Swamps and the New Imagination: On the Future of Cohabitation in Art, Architecture and Philosophy is forthcoming in 2025 (Sternberg Press, distributed by MIT Press).
Their work is included in the collections of MACBA (Barcelona), FRAC Nord–Pas de Calais (Dunkerque), Helsinki Art Museum, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art (Helsinki), Schwerin State Museum of Art (Germany), Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci (Italy), the National Gallery of Art (Vilnius), and MO Museum (Vilnius), among others.
Urbonas has taught and lectured extensively worldwide. Full-time teaching positions include NTNU – Norwegian University of Science and Technology (2005–2009), a Visiting Professorship at CAFA – Central Academy of Fine Arts (2018–2022), as well as positions at Vytautas Magnus University (Kaunas) and NABA – Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti (Milan).
