Adomas Narkevičius is a London based curator who graduated with a BA in Philosophy from Vilnius University and an MA in History of Art from UCL. Recently, he has curated 15th Kaunas Biennial “Life After Life” (2025), co-curated “We Don’t Do This” at Vilnius’s MO Museum (2024), and is co-curating the Latvian Pavilion for the 61st Venice Biennale (2026) with Inga Lāce.

In this 2026 video essay that feels more like a video podcast than a studio visit, London-based curator and Founding Director of Upė Foundation, Adomas Narkevičius, reflects and explores the fluid intersections of regional art histories, institutional limits, and artistic freedom. Reflecting on his transition from studying philosophy in Vilnius to art history at UCL in London, Narkevičius discusses how both his studies and also distance from his home country has provided the essential methodological tools to look anew at the Baltic avant-garde, gender, and sexuality. He pinpoints the motivations behind Upė Foundation’s bold initiatives that range from curatorial fellowships to a forthcoming “experimentation fund” designed to back off-kilter, micro-historical, or highly ambitious artistic formats. All of those mentioned seem to slip through the cracks of conventional funding. Moving beyond institutional moralism and the mainstream pressure on artists to act as social workers, Narkevičius makes a highly compelling case for embracing instability, preserving radical curiosity, and building poetic yet powerful cross-border pathways that make new dialogues between the Baltic region and the global art ecosystem possible.