Isabella Tjäder participates in the Sapieha Palace Symposium in Vilnius this month, in a program attending to the role of storytelling—word, voice, text, listening, memory, and emotion—in contemporary art and culture.
Moderating the panel discussion which concludes the day’s program of speakers, Tjäder will reflect on ways of working with language and storytelling in relation to Index program and Index Teen Advisory Board.

Speakers include Agnieszka Polska, Marissa Lee Benedict and David Rueter, Irene V. Small, Irene Revell, Goda Klumbytė, Monika Kalinauskaitė, Keiu Krikmann, and Isabella Tjäder, among others.

The Sapieha Palace Symposium is an annual gathering bringing together leading scholars and artists to explore pressing contemporary questions. The inaugural symposium, held in 2025, examined the multifaceted theme of ageing and featured presentations by Eglė Ambrasaitė, Jo Applin, Julia Bryan-Wilson, Kim Kraczon, and Artūras Tereškinas. The conversations that emerged addressed ageing not merely as a biological process but as a complex cultural, political, and aesthetic phenomenon.

For the 2026 edition, attention turns to the role of storytelling—word, voice, text, listening, memory, and emotion—in contemporary art and culture. The symposium gathers an international group of artists, curators, art historians, and researchers covering several distinct themes, including speculative storytelling, feminist voices and listening, the archive, and the fate of narrative in the post-digital world.

Read more about the program and Sapieha Palace here.