International Photography and Media Art Festival IPMA

A person nearby. A gaze. A conversation. A memory that suddenly returns as clearly as if it happened yesterday. A place where, upon arrival, the body recognizes exactly where it is. A voice on the phone. A hand on the shoulder. An image that briefly brings you back to a moment in the past. Sometimes a connection is felt through habits we do not even notice. Through inherited fears. Through the language we use to try to say what does not always yield to words. Through natural processes of which we are always a part, even if we choose to pretend to be outside observers. Through technologies that bring us closer while simultaneously taking away a certain essential element. Through such an all-encompassing closeness to another person that you no longer know where your own being ends and theirs begins. This year's IPMA festival invites you to look closely at the connections that form, hold, break, change direction, manifest very clearly, and sometimes remain barely perceptible. As every year, in the 2026 IPMA exhibition, works by artists from Lithuania and other countries around the world meet in one space. Some speak about human closeness. Others – about the vulnerability of the body, the intertwining of nature and culture, memory, cultural codes, and the dependencies created by technologies. It would seem that each work looks in a different direction. At a different experience. At a different point of sensitivity. Especially interesting is each creator's attempt to interpret the connection, to know it, to understand it, to reveal it. However, it is no less important to try to understand not only each work individually, but also the connection that arises between them: between images that unexpectedly resonate; between themes that begin to complement or contradict each other; between tensions, harmonies, and coincidences. "Connections" at the IPMA festival becomes an open question: how do you experience and perceive connections when you are in between? When you are connected. With a person. With an image. With a body. With a place. With what is alive, and what we still call inanimate. Svetlana Batura. IPMA festival director, curator More about the festival – on the official IPMA website.