New Mineral Collective, formed in 2012, is the collaborative artistic practice of Tanya Busse and Emilija Škarnulytė. Together, their work questions geography, landscape, ecology, and human relations with nature. They define their activities as “counter‐prospecting,” in opposition to the practice of excavating mineral deposits to mine raw materials.
Tanya Busse is a visual artist from Moncton, New Brunswick, who lives and works in Tromsø, Norway. Her practice incorporates mediums of moving‐image, sculpture, and printed matter, and she is interested in aspects of deep‐time, invisible architecture, and how power is articulated through material relationships and histories of place. She has exhibited at Podium, Oslo, Norway; Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography in Toronto, Canada; Turku Biennial in Turku, Finland; Abbaye‐Aux‐ Dames, Caen, France. She co‐directs Mondo Books, an independent book platform that publishes and distributes printed materials across the arctic region.
Emilija Škarnulytė is an artist and filmmaker, born in Vilnius, Lithuania. Working between documentary and the imaginary, Škarnulytė makes films and immersive installations exploring deep time and invisible structures, from the cosmic and geologic to the ecological and political. Winner of the 2019 Future Generation Art Prize, Škarnulytė represented Lithuania at the XXII Triennale di Milano and was included in the Baltic Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Biennale of Architecture. She has had solo exhibitions at Kunsthaus Pasquart (2021), Den Frie (2021), National Gallery of Art in Vilnius (2021), CAC (2015) and Kunstlerhaus Bethanien (2017), and has participated in group shows at Ballroom Marfa, Seoul Museum of Art, Kadist Foundation, and the First Riga Biennial. In 2022, Škarnulytė participated in the group exhibition Penumbra organized by Fondazione In Between Art Film on the occasion of the 59th Venice Biennale. Her numerous prizes include the Kino der Kunst Project Award, Munich (2017); Spare Bank Foundation DNB Artist Award (2017), and the National Lithuanian Art Prize for Young Artists (2016)), and she was nominated as the candidate for the Ars Fennica art award 2023. She received an undergraduate degree from the Brera Academy of Art in Milan and holds a Masters degree from the Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art.