Sigrid Viir and Cloe Jancis. Photo: Rauno Volmar
On February 8, the 2022 main awards and lifetime achievement awards of the Cultural Foundation and the annual awards of the visual and applied art, audiovisual art and folk culture endowment fund were ceremonially handed over in Viimsi Artium.
Plenty of EKA alumni among the award recipients!
MAIN PRIZES 2022
Kristel Jakobson (EKA Interior Architecture), Joel Kopli (EKA Architecture) – for the Rakvere Work and Technology Center
Fine and Applied Arts
Erik Alalooga (EKA Sculpture) – for the personal exhibition “Freed Machines” organized in the monumental gallery of Tartu Art House and for the promotion of local sound art, the most important of which is the Mäo Rist festival held in Ajuokse Avangaar in Tartu in the summer of 2022.
Performing Arts
Liis Vares (EKA Contemporary Art) – for the sense of mission and courage to use (performance) art to fight against evil and stand up for the weak. Award for selfless humanitarian action – for organizing anti-war and suicide prevention actions, guiding and involving people with special needs, as well as creating an artistically high-level choreographic space “Kus sa oled?” at the Baltoscandal festival.
LIFETIME AWARDS 2022
Kersti Lootus (EKA Architecture) – the lifetime achievement award of the architecture endowment capital – to a landscape architect who continues to actively deal with space and the environment, whose work has been sensitively site-specific over time, and whose interventions have been well-thought-out and bold.
Visual and Applied Arts Endowment Annual Awards 2022
Jaanus Samma (EKA Graphics, Art and Design) – for the preparation of the comprehensive creative research exhibition “Stillness with national motifs” at the Estonian Museum of Applied Arts and Design. Researching and interpreting the use of national patterns and shapes in Estonian consumer art and graphics 1930-1950. years, Samma creates a remarkable and multi-layered whole, where historical material enters into an eloquent dialogue with contemporary art and today.
Taavi Talve (EKA Sculpture) – three complete and uncompromising personal exhibitions typical of the author, which looked deep into the questions of humanity’s morality. Those who have agreed to think along with Winter’s exciting scenarios, which seem puzzling at first glance, have not been disappointed: “I was in Timbuktu” in the Tallinn City Gallery, “(re)constructed viewpoints” in the Draakon gallery, “Documented viewpoints” in the EKA gallery.
Sigrid Viir, Cloe Jancis (EKA Photography) – a dialogue born in quarantine that re-materialized in 2022, this time at the exhibition “Second act. Found in translation”, is probably the best thing that corona has given to Estonian art. It’s always exciting to see how the handwritings of two artists merge into a never-before-seen third, and if the result is as enchanting as the dialogue between Cloe Jancis and Sigrid Viir, I can’t ask for more.
Flo Kasearu (EKA Painting) – for the large-scale solo exhibition “Flo’s Retrospective” at Recklinghausen Kunsthalle in Germany. Directing his own retrospective, Kasearu takes over the entire Kunsthalle building in his characteristic witty and total way. By combining previous works with new installations, he creates an engaging spatial choreography that guides the visitor from floor to floor and back to the urban space through socially critical and politically relevant topics.
Alice Kask (EKA Painting), Neeme Külm (EKA Sculpture) – a delicate and technically high-level exhibition “Vanity alone” in the Tallinn City Gallery, which at the beginning of 2022 invited the viewer to observe the rare collaborative project of two artists who are different in terms of execution, but uniformly poetic. Over the years, Külm and Kask have each stood out as very special artists, and all the more they are able to create anticipation in every exhibition visitor for similar collaborative projects in the future!
Kadri Toom (EKA Graphics) – for an active creative year both as an artist and as a leader in the graphics field. The exhibition “Ways of Seeing from the Periphery” in the Draakon Gallery introduced the audience to his searching way of working, where landscapes, places and non-places went through a multi-layered process under the artist’s hand, offering viewers recognition, refined visual pleasure and injecting color vitamins. In addition to his artistic practice, Toomi also deserves recognition for his work as a promoter of graphics as an art form, contributing to the continuing relevance of an art form with a long history in the field of contemporary art.