LAURA GUOKĖ

Artist BIO

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Laura Guokė is a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans drawing, painting, sculpture, video, installation, and engineering technologies. Her artistic practice explores the mystery of human existence through subconscious processes, philosophical reflection, and socially relevant themes. Grounded in both intuition and critical inquiry, Guokė’s work is deeply rooted in lived human experience.

Professionally trained as a printmaker, she has held over 20 solo exhibitions and participated in international art projects across the UK, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the U.S., and beyond. Guokė’s work has earned numerous awards, grants, and fellowships both in Lithuania and internationally.

Her portraits—which often blend traditional painting with digital projection—have received major accolades. In 2016, she won the prestigious Travel Award at the BP Portrait Award (now Herbert Smith Freehills Portrait Award) at the National Portrait Gallery in London for her portrait Petras from the Lithuanian Countryside series. Subsequent works created in the Ritsona Refugee Camp in Greece were exhibited in major galleries across the UK and acquired by the MO Museum in Vilnius. She was one of the six artists featured in the 2019 BBC documentary, Portrait of an Artist. In 2018, she was awarded the First Prize in the International Three Bridges Foundation Competition (Poland) for her painting „Boy from Aleppo“. In 2021, she earned the Special Prize of Independent Film Critics Premio Boccalino d'Oro 2021 Locarno at the Locarno Film Festival for the artistic painting and video project Three Worlds. In 2022 she received First Prize in the category of Figurative Artworks at the Chianciano Biennale in Italy.

Guokė’s work challenges the viewer to contemplate identity, trauma, and empathy. Through the intersection of classical technique and contemporary themes, she offers powerful visual narratives that give voice to the often unheard.