Exhibitions

EKA Young Artist Award 2022 laureate Chun Au Yeung has his solo exhibition “You’ve Been in My Mind” in Hobusepea gallery open until October 30th.

“It was a chilly night, so I went home after a long walk at dawn. I was sitting on the couch, covering myself with a blanket and listening to a song. The lyrics kept lingering in my head…”that’s me in the corner, that’s me in the spotlight, losing my religion…” That night, I was not the only one in the spotlight. Suddenly, I heard a big bang noise that came from the corner. It was so dark in the room, all I could see was all of my jackets falling off on the ground. At that moment, I was thinking about someone…”
Chun Au Yeung

You’ve Been In My Mind arises from the innermost state of discrete moments to explore the tension between hope and fear, and to translate into art how the two feelings fall together, are voiced and formed. Chun creates meditative drawings and installations based on his personal experience from a living place, presenting it as an intimate but also alienating situation through fusing together the household objects and elements.

The new series of works in the exhibition develops and enlarges feelings and lived situations from Chun’s own experiences, mostly influenced by his current displacement from his original homeland. “I am bearing my soul, seeking hidden signs of hope and meaning, but the process is holding me back, somehow it makes me feel fear” Chun said. Hellos, Goodbyes (2023), is a work transformed from a cloth hanger stand. By removing all the original hanging hooks, Chun subtly attached an archery to the body of the cloth hanger stand, as if it was shooting by someone from somewhere, vaguely hinting towards something reminiscent of the archery target, revealing a wounded and destroyed relationship.

In You’ve Been In My Mind, Chun continues his exploration of the relationship between domestic elements and human nature, combined with both personal and collective emotions. Specific furniture becomes the medium that allows the artist to construct the complicated feelings of daily experiences, where each object opens a dialogue, which can be both decadent and hopeful at the same time, around the notion of home.

Exhibitions in Hobusepea gallery are supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Ministry of Culture and Liviko Ltd.

On October 23, as part of EKA Ceramics 100, it will be possible to watch the 2020 documentary film 972 Breakdowns by Daniel von Rüdiger, which shows the 2.5-year trip on motorcycles through Siberia by five young artists (among whom Kaupo Holmberg, an alumnus of the ceramics department).

On the colorful journey, which starts in Germany and is planned to go through Georgia, Mongolia, Siberia and New York, Canada, the group also experiences many setbacks, which are overcome with the help of friendship, creativity and youthful enthusiasm.

The film is in English, German and Russian, with English subtitles. It lasted 110 minutes

Place: A-501, start at 17.00

Exhibition How to be Here by the 3rd year students of the department of painting at the Estonian Academy of Arts will be opened in the hall of exhibitions in the library of the University of Tartu at 18:00 on Monday, October 16th, 2023.

Participating artists are: Karola Ainsar, Anaïs Dubois, Maria Hindreko, Liisa-Lota Jõeleht, Stanislav Alexander Mihheljus, Daria Morozova and Marc Léger Sauvageot 

All artworks exhibited at the current venue have been completed during this autumn, during the seven-week long studio practice. Therefore, this exhibition serves as a transient gesture of the present moment, reminding of a leaving a quick handwritten note to the audience while asking the question: how to be here. 

During the third year of their BA studies, students increasingly dedicate themselves to searching for their artist statement and unique style that often develops throughout years. These young artists are at the beginning of this journey. Even their paintings are simultaneously similar and different. While sharing the studio space, the artists share other things as well – they are influenced by common ideas, conversations and working hours. Even when seeking their individuality, the shared workspace connects them with each other. The inevitable solitude of a painter and the skill as well as the desire to cope with this solitude is something that they still have to experience in the future. 

The artist comment on their work as follows: 

Karola Ainsar: When I said that I desired to be away, I was already on the road. The field is endless, yet the rain has stopped and colours around me are entirely different than before. The gates take the shape of bridges and I want to know what’s there on the other side. I am already on my way. 

Anaïs Dubois: My purpose in painting is to create a world of my own where everything is possible. This world depicts different spaces like landscape and interior scenes that blend together to create an image. While working with the process of reappropriating my memories I create fragmented and colourful compositions in oil painting that question space and how we perceive it. 

Maria Hindreko: In my painting series I work with the means of collage. The starting point is the repetition of patterns and shapes as well as various contrasts: pink and green; geometric and ambiguous forms; spatiality and flatness; opacity and transparency. I depict these contrasting world with specific transitions characteristic of collages. 

Liisa-Lota Jõeleht: My works are inspired by risograph printing: in order to print photos, colour layers (blue, red, yellow and black) are separated and printed out in layers on top of each other. Small dots of colour blend thus creating new hues. When working on these paintings, I have been contemplating on how much so-called raw information could be included in an image that without any context won’t convey anything and leaving an abstract impression. I compare visuals with fossils where there is a trace of something specific, yet the image/object itself is absent. All we have is the knowledge about its existence. 

Alexander Stanislav Mihheljus: Sometimes you have to face the truth and accept that you don’t always have great ideas swimming around in your head. So, embrace what is given. The hay! 

Daria Morozova: My artwork “Language barrier” addresses the difficulties in expressing one’s emotions and thoughts, as well as the strong desire to communicate with the world either through one’s mother tongue or a foreign language. I often find it difficult to find the right words. I feel that every act of communication is inevietably distorted, words get stuck in your throat, get lost or misinterpreted so that you end up alone with these and your emotions. 

Marc Léger Sauvageot: In the painting series “Wrestle I” and “Wrestle II”, the underlying themes are the power of bodies, their mutual collisions and vulnerability. The artist uses bodies as a starting point to explore sexual identity and psychology while revealing the nuances of sensitivity and subconsious emotions. Various materials such as chalk primer, egg tempera and oil paint. 

Supervisor: Sirja-Liisa Eelma 

Technical support of the exhibition: Mihkel Ilus

Exhibition will be open until December 17, 2023.  

The hall of exhibitions in the library of the University of Tartu (Struve Street 1, Tartu) is open Mon-Fri 9–21, Sat-Sun 12–18. 

On Tuesday October 17th at 18:00, Noah Emanuel Morrison opens his first solo exhibition NNNNNNNNNNNN at Vent Space, Vabaduse väljak 6/8.

The exhibition is a part of Tallinn Photomonth’s satellite program.

Within this ongoing, site-specific body of work, he considers how and where racist language becomes camouflaged within the city. The exhibition draws attention to the contemporary phenomenon of the NGR/S/Z series of graffiti, present throughout Tallinn. Walking around as a Black, queer-identified individual, he has been deeply disturbed by these. Reactive and self-reflective, the exhibition veers from research-informed to quotidian in its interventions into Tallinn’s racialized public space.

The show’s central sculpture, Substrate, is a chimera of a fence in Tallinn, on which an early 1990’s graffiti, Neegrid Eestist Välja, was written. Amid the global fascist turn, the piece reflects on the stakes of reaction within the graffiti’s wake.

He will show documentation of his 2022 public performance, Harm’s Way, in which he recites an autobiographical narrative from his time in Tallinn at three sites of the NGR graffiti around his home. At the third of these sites, he attempts to interpret the graffiti’s meaning.

These pieces are accompanied by diaristic and self-reflective analogue image series and video works.

It will be open 12-19 every day through October 24th.

Noah Emanuel Morrison (b. 1995) is a lens-based artist from New York City, currently enrolled in the Masters of Contemporary Art program at the Estonian Academy of Arts and the Masters of Photography program at Aalto University. His practice centers on identity, belonging, and the construction of desire.

Graphic Design: Shubham Aggarwal
Project Assistant: Elias Kuulmann
Supported by: The Cultural Endowment of Estonia

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Within dictionaries, a flag is claimed as being “a piece of cloth with a particular design representing a country, party, association, etc.” From 8 October until 15 October, artist Thomas Sadée is going to challenge this description.

Together with you!

In How about flags we play with the concept of flags. What can a flag be? What can it stand for? When do we identify a thing as a flag? Let’s talk together, brainstorm together, and work together!

From 8 October until 15 October Ventspace will be open from 12:00 until 18:00.

Feel free to stop by to explore the idea of flags together.

On 13 October there will be a free workshop where we will make our own flags, and afterward partake in the unique flag parade from 15:00 until 19:00 – so please bring your own everyday materials to use.

This whole project will come together in a Finissage on 15 October from 15:00 until 20:00.

All activities take place at Vent Space, Vabaduse väljak 6-8.

On 6 October at 6 pm, Trance, the main exhibition of Tallinn Photomonth’s seventh edition, will open at Tallinn Art Hall’s Lasnamäe Pavilion.

It explores people’s everyday addiction to screens and includes works by 17 artists from eight countries, as well as three artist duos and one artist group. Several artists will present their works in Estonia for the first time. Curated by New York based, Finnish curator, Ilari Laamanen, the exhibition will remain open until 26 November.

“Trance looks into the charm and allure of being engaged with technology on the one hand, and the darker side of these rapid developments on the other. The presence of these objects is so mundane and pervasive, even to the point that not having one could give an individual the feeling of isolation from the social context altogether,” says Ilari Laamanen, curator of the exhibition. The exhibition focuses on technological trance as people’s dependence on screens, and it examines how the transition from photographic images to interactive screens, as well the intimately intertwined relationship between the two, marks one of the most significant and destabilising changes in the way in which humans perceive reality, but also how contemporary art can be a fertile ground for making sense of the relationship between technology and the human experience.

According to Laamanen, an art exhibition offers an environment where alternative ways of communicating and transmitting information can be used: “The artists in the exhibition utilise glitch as a conceptual tool, which offers the viewer an opportunity to take a break, step back from the technological trance, and contemplate on the meanings and significance of art and images.” The presented artworks invite viewers to perceive and analyse various means of (audio)visual presentation and to review their own relationship with watching.

The artists participating in the main exhibition are Sara Bjarland (FI/NL), Zody Burke (US/EE), Patricia Domínguez (CL), Elo-Reet Järv (EE), Karel Koplimets (EE), Diane Severin Nguyen (US), Veli Granö (FI), Laila Majid (AE/UK) and Louis Blue Newby (UK), Norman Orro and Joonas Timmi (EE), Pire Sova and Ando Naulainen (EE), Viktor Timofeev (LV/US), Anu Vahtra (EE), Jessica Wilson (US) and artist group CUSS Group (ZA).

According to Laamanen, Trance has an interdisciplinary and cross-generational focus, and each artist’s work has an unexpected impact at the exhibition: “The process of curatorial work has been strongly influenced by the unusual architecture of Tallinn Art Hall’s Lasnamäe Pavilion. The presented works are in dialogue with the exhibition space, which makes the exhibition an engaging and multi-sensory experience. Estonia-based artists Zody Burke, Karel Koplimets, Anu Vahtra, Pire Sova and Ando Naulainen will create new installations specially for Photo Month. I am very pleased to introduce the works of international artists Patricia Domínguez, Laila Majid and Louis Blue Newby, and the CUSS Group for the first time in Tallinn.”

The exhibition is accompanied by a rich public and educational programme, you can find further information on the Tallinn Art Hall website: https://www.kunstihoone.ee/en/programme/.

Running from 6 October to 26 November the Tallinn Photo Month ’23 main programme, includes international group exhibition Trance at Tallinn Art Hall’s Lasnamäe Pavilion and Artist Film screenings at Sõprus Cinema in collaboration with the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (16 and 17 November; curators Piibe Kolka and Genevieve Yue). The biennial’s Satellite programme includes a continued collaboration with several important partners and exhibition spaces focused on photo-led art in Tallinn. In cooperation with Tallinn City Transport, an urban space installation will be presented in two Tallinn trams. More information about the Tallinn Photomonth contemporary art biennial programme can be found at https://www.fotokuu.ee/en/programm.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Ilari Laamanen
Ilari Laamanen is an independent curator based in New York. He co-curated the ninth edition of the Momentum biennial in Moss, Norway in 2017. As the Director of Programs at the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York (2013–2020), he curated and commissioned projects to the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, New Museum’s Ideas City festival, and Brooklyn Bridge Park. At the FCINY he led the MOBIUS Fellowship Program for six years, establishing partnerships with institutions such as Artists Space, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, and JUDD Foundation. He has edited the publications Crossroads – New Views on Art and Environment, MOBIUS Manual and Beyond the Pleasure Principle.

Lasnamäe Pavilion of Tallinn Art Hall
The Tallinn Art Hall Foundation is a contemporary art establishment that presents exhibitions in two galleries in 2022–2024 – at Tallinn Art Hall’s Lasnamäe Pavilion and Tallinn City Gallery. The exhibitions of Tallinn Art Hall are installed by Valge Kuup.

Tallinn Photomonth
Tallinn Photomonth is an international biennial of contemporary art which presents works from almost all areas of visual culture and looks more broadly at the development of art and society, increasingly mediated by photographic images, cameras and screens. Tallinn Photo Month was initiated in 2011 by the Estonian Union of Photography Artists (FOKU), which coordinates and supports collaboration between art institutions, galleries and artists.

How is knowledge about the city produced and to what ends? What methods help broaden perspectives on the city? How to learn from urban space and represent the results?

Urban Studies year I students invite you to the final presentations of the “Art and the City” course, which has focused on creative urban methods. Entitled Momentum Montenegro, the evening of presentations delves into the social and material aspects of the first microdistrict of Mustamäe.

As Estonia’s first panel house district, it pioneered a new spatial configuration and quickly became an iconic dream destination in war-ravaged mid-century Tallinn. However, the implementation of this housing model has been heavily critiqued since its inception. Now, four houses from the I micro-district have been earmarked for a neighbourhood renovation pilot project seeking to upgrade the buildings as well as the space between them.

The presented projects focus on the public space between these four panel houses, not with the aim to prove something but to learn something.

The course is tutored by Mattias Malk.

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We provide an overview of the current status of the Benin traditional music project.

Introducing the traditional music of Grand-Popo in Benin (West Africa).

Composer and singer Steve Abeni (Benin) and the Benin traditional music ensemble will contribute
Hans-Gunter Lock
Andrus Haugas
Janek Samberg
Asya Dorofeeva
Andrus Kallastu 

Since Grand-Popo is one of the most important voodoo spiritual centers in addition to extremely exciting musical traditions, in addition to musicians, anthropologists, religious researchers, dance researchers, visual artists, filmmakers, cultural historians, philosophers and experts in other fields are invited to exchange ideas.

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The ceramics department of EKA is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. This exhibition is one of the events. The large-scale ceramic forms exhibited in Viimsi Artium have been completed as a first-year study project of the EKA Ceramics Department.

The works planned and built during March and April have been fired in the beginning of May in the anagama-type kiln located in Tohisoo manor park in Kohila. The special feature of the kiln is that it is heated with wood and the objects to be fired are in direct contact with the flame, one firing lasts on average 50 hours and the kiln cools down in 4-5 days.

Participating current and former students: Anna-Liisa Villmann, Merilyn Kasemets, Keily Kerem, Lilian Maasik, Elisabeth Tönne, Sanna Lova, Kristel Kärdi, Linda Viikant, Mari-Ann Maask, Maria Kim, Kätriin Reinart, Marta Vikentjeva, Gaida -Erica Pärn, Helen Griffiths, Ethel Ütsmüts.

Subject supervisor and exhibition organizer: Karin Kalman

The exhibition will remain open until October 19.