Urte Janus is a sculptor whose work centers on the transformative properties of reactive substances such as salts, acids, and, more recently, tears. Her chemically active sculptures decompose over time, embracing fragility and decay. Janus critiques the capitalist paradox of preservation and discard, alongside the toxicity of its indestructible byproducts, while reflecting on the temporal and fragile nature of the planet, body, and mind.
Born in 90s Lithuania after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Janus grew up amidst the violence of multigenerational and ecological trauma caused by war, occupation, and systemic repression. This experience shaped her practice, making art a means of illuminating the vulnerability of living systems.
Her process is driven by rigorous material investigations, examining substances through chemical, cultural, and geological lenses. Janus also works with dreams, seeking to access inaccessible spaces such as salt mines and deep storage repositories to explore the parallels between the Earth’s strata and the underworlds of the mind.
Urte recently graduated with an MA in Art & Ecology from Goldsmiths, University of London, and currently works as a Junior Fellow at the Centre for Art & Ecology at Goldsmiths. She was selected for the Emerging Artist JCDecaux Art Prize in Vilnius (2023) and is an alumna of the Alexander McQueen Sarabande Foundation in London (2023). Her work has been exhibited in galleries such as Editorial Projects, Vilnius (2024); Arts SU Gallery Space, London (2024); The National Gallery, Vilnius (2023); and The Alexander McQueen Foundation, London (2023), among others. In addition to her artistic practice, she curates Project Octagon, an outdoor art initiative based at the Anglican Chapel in Nunhead Cemetery, London.