For Foto Tallinn 2026, Drifts presents selected works by Lithuanian photographer Janina Sabaliauskaitė. Her work is characterized by an intimate, feminist gaze that explores the body, queer relationships, identity, sexuality, and disability.

Janina’s photographs are not mere images, but a form of being, a bodily coexistence of a human and earth. They are inhabited by bodies – ones loved and left behind, ones whipped and desired. These bodies are exploded by proximity, loneliness and lust, by the power of the earth charging the landscapes of bodies. As curator Laima Kreivytė writes, in Janina’s photographs, the glances that meet on both sides of the camera create mutual trust, support, and proximity; her works span from intimate portraits of queer people to landscapes of bodies. The way Sabaliauskaitė looks at the earth and rocks is not sculptural, but rather mythological, emphasising the changed attitude of the Anthropocene era: whereas previously the earth meant resources, in her photographs the Earth is a deity, a planet, soil and an element. These pictures are like an encounter of the archaeomythology of Marija Gimbutas, the Gaia Hypothesis of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis, and the ideas of the pioneers of ecosexuality, Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle, who changed land art into the love of the Earth.

Janina Sabaliauskaitė (b. 1991) is a photographer and independent curator working with archival material and analogue photography, based between England and Lithuania. In 2014, Sabaliauskaitė graduated from Sunderland University, UK, Photography, Video and Digital Imaging department. Sabaliauskaitė’s works have been exhibited in both group and personal exhibitions, including Superglue, or inventing the friend, Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius (2026), International Exhibition of Leather Forms, BGSW / Podgrodzie, Słupsk and Ustka, Poland (2026), Anna-Stina Treumund: How to Recognise a Lesbian?, KUMU Art museum, Tallinn, (2025), Pleasure, Radvila Palace of Art, Vilnius, (2025, solo), The Secret Lives of Bottle of Notes, MIMA, Middlesbrough, UK (2025), Bare life, Mākslas festivāls Cēsis, LV (2025), Main Protagonist, Slugtown, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK (2025), Love Diaries, Išgir̃stì, Vilnius Queer Archive, Vilnius, (2024, solo), The Skin We Live In, Portraits from the NGCA Collection, Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland, UK (2024), Paris Photo. The Forms of Things, The Forms of Skulls, Forms of Love, Grand Palais, Paris, (2024), Les Ambassadeurs, Fondation Fiminco, Paris, (2024); In the Name of Desire, Latvian National Museum of Art, Riga, (2024), We Don’t Do This. Intimacy, Norms and Fantasies in Baltic Art, MO museum, Vilnius, (2024); Trust, Drifts gallery, Vilnius, (2023, solo), Sending Love, Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland, UK (2022, solo). Her work is included in the collections of MO Museum (LT), the Lithuanian National Museum of Art (LT), and the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art (UK).

Public days: Friday – Sunday, 18 – 20 September 2026

Please find the Catalogue for Foto Tallinn 2026