The 4th international photography and media art festival invites you to explore the theme of connection

This autumn, the International Photography and Media Art (IPMA) Festival will take place in Kaunas for the fourth time. Over the years, the festival has grown into an international platform bringing together renowned artists from around the world, curators, cultural institutions, higher education establishments and emerging creators. Taking place from 1 to 31 October at the Kaunas Picture Gallery (K. Donelaičio St. 16, Kaunas), the festival invites visitors to take a closer look at the theme of connection.

A person beside you. A glance. A conversation. A memory that suddenly returns so vividly, as if it had happened yesterday. A place where, upon entering, the body itself recognises where it is. A voice on the phone. A hand on the shoulder. An image that, for a moment, brings you back to a past instant.

Sometimes connection is felt through habits we do not even notice. Through inherited fears. Through language, with which we try to express what does not always yield to words. Through natural processes of which we are always a part, even when we choose to pretend that we are merely observers from the outside. Through technologies that bring us closer while, at the same time, taking away some essential element. Through such an all-encompassing closeness of another person that you no longer know where your own being ends and theirs begins.

This year, the IPMA Festival invites us to look closely at precisely these connections: the ones that emerge, endure, break apart, change direction, appear with great clarity, or sometimes remain barely perceptible.

As every year, in 2026 the IPMA exhibition brings together, in one space, works by artists from Lithuania and other countries around the world. Some speak of human closeness. Others address the vulnerability of the body, the entanglement of nature and culture, memory, cultural codes, and the dependencies created by technologies. At first glance, each work seems to be looking in a different direction. Towards a different experience. Towards a different point of sensitivity. What is especially interesting is each artist’s attempt to interpret connection, to understand it, to grasp it, to reveal it.

And yet it is no less important to try to understand not only each work separately, but also the connection that arises between them: between images that unexpectedly echo one another; between themes that begin to complement or contradict each other; between tensions, resonances, and coincidences.

At the IPMA Festival, Connections becomes an open question: how do you experience and understand connections when you are in between? When you are connected. To a person. To an image. To a body. To a place. To what is alive, and to what we still call inanimate.

The International Photography and Media Art (IPMA) will take place from 1 to 31 October. Festival organized by: Kauno kolegija HEI and Kūrybinis blokas. Festival financed by the Lithuanian Council for Culture, and the “Initiatives for Kaunas” programme initiated by Kaunas City Municipality. Festival partners: M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art, UAB Kautra, International Photography Festivals Association (IPFA), Lithuanian Photographers Association, Lithuanian Culture Institute, Kaunas Artists’ House (KAH), Kaunas School Technical Creativity Center (MTKC), Polish Institute in Vilnius, KULTŪRA! café, Foto123, IRSAUL. Festival media partners: 15min, Kauno diena, Kaunas pilnas kultūros, Kaunas IN, monthly culture and art magazine NEMUNAS..