Exhibitions

The pop-up exhibition opened at NART on 21st of January investigates the possibilities of including the body and related identity markers (age, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, social class, etc.) in the creative process.

The display is the outcome of the “Body & Identity”  course run at the Design Department at the Estonian Academy of Arts in autumn 2022. The students were guided through several layers, or membranes, as we called them,  determining one’s identity, from body and gender up to our contemporary identities in the digital realm.

By actively combining theory, workshops and personal practice, the students were familiarised with how identity-related categories, whether as culturally constructed and historically changing phenomenons or quests for personal style, could be inscribed in and communicated through design and/or arts. Working with relevant literature and constant analysis led to various projects in which the students explored how their favoured medium could be expressed via the given subject matter.

Artists: Karolin Kärm, Rita RebaineLonks, Otto Antson, Kadri Vahar, Epp Vislapuu, Katrin-Maria Terras, Ieva Laskevičiūtė (LTU), Matthieu Champion (FRA)

Curators: Annamari Vänskä (FIN), Piret Puppart

Futuristic fantasies that were manifested in architecture and art from the 1960s to the 1980s.

On Friday, January 20 an exhibition „Forecast and Fantasy: Architecture Without Borders, 1960s–1980s“ will be opened in Rotermann Salt Storage.

This exhibition stages a meeting point for scientific predictions and futuristic fantasies that were manifested in architecture and art from the 1960s to the 1980s.

Bringing together authors from Eastern Europe and the West, the exhibition will display works that emerged from the new technological reality that followed the Second World War, and which took it along unexpected paths: foreseeing the replacement of work with games and collective pleasures in computerised societies, turning away from the overarching machine logic and replacing it with myths and romantic ideas of the human being, or looking for traces of other civilizations from space, instead of conquering it. A utopia of quantification and of scientific planning, of the separation of life and work, was replaced by a striving towards harmony between the machine and nature, the mind and the body. These projects are extensions of a technologicised world, ironic and absurd situations that present a critique of rationalism and speak of the contradictions of late modern society, demonstrating at the same time both its intellectual horizons and the limits of its utopian fantasies.

The exhibition will present works of the following architects, artists and groups: Archizoom, Yuri Avvakumov, Alexander Brodsky & Ilya Utkin, Igor Dřevíkovský & David Vávra, Dvizhenie, Stano Filko, István B. Gellér, Anna Halprin, Zdeněk Hölzel & Jan Kerel, Jozef Jankovič, NER, Tiit Kaljundi, Jevgeni Klimov, Mari Kurismaa, Kai Koppel, Vilen Künnapu, Leonhard Lapin, Hardijs Lediņš, Avo-Himm Looveer, Kirmo Mikkola, Stefan Müller, Jüri Okas, OHO, Ain Padrik, Alessandro Poli, László Rajk, Toomas Rein, Sirje Runge, Superstudio, Tõnis Vint, and others. The photo kit can be downloaded from here.

Curators of the exhibition are Andres Kurg and Mari Laanemets, their assistent is Kristina Papstel. Design is by Kaisa Sööt and Indrek Sirkel. This exhibition has been produced in collaboration with the Estonian Academy of Arts and its research was supported by the Estonian Research Council grant (PRG530).

The director of the Estonian Museum of Architecture Triin Ojari states, that for the Estonian Museum of Architecture, it has been an exceptional loan process, because the exhibited works come from nearly 30 different national and private collections in Europe and Canada. Bringing all the threads together has been a real detective work for the curators. „We are happy to say that the Estonian Museum of Architecture is a reliable partner for several of the world’s top museums and collections, such as the Tate, the Neues Museum in Nuremberg, the Canadian Center for Architecture, Drawing Matter and the Museum Folkwang in Essen.

The exhibition places the Estonian architecture of the 1970s-1980 into international context and does it visually very effectively, comparing the works of our artists and architects not only with Russian paper architects, but also with Polish, Czech, Italian, Latvian and several other authors. The exhibition blurs the line between art and architecture, which both contribute equally to the visions of the future.

The curators of the exhibition, Andres Kurg and Mari Laanemets have collaborated earlier on such exhibitions as “Environment, Projects, Concepts: Architects of the Tallinn School, 1972-1985” (Museum of Estonian Architecture, 2008) and “Our Metamorphic Futures: Design, Technical Aesthetics and Experimental Architecture in the Soviet Union” (Vilnius National Gallery and Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design, 2011-2012).

Andres Kurg is professor of architectural history and theory at the Estonian Academy of Arts. His research focuses on architecture and design in the Soviet Union in the 1960s-1980s in relation to changes in technology and everyday life, and to alternative art practices.

Mari Laanemets is senior researcher at the Estonian Academy of Arts. Her research focuses on 1960s and 1970s alternative art in the Soviet Union and its intersections with architecture and design practices, on post-war abstractionism and the aesthetics of modernisation in Eastern Europe.

The exhibition in the Estonian Museum of Architecture in the Rotermann Salt Storage is open until April 30, 2023.

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The joint exhibition by the Design and Crafts MA and MACA students Staying in the Compost: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene.

Opening Thursday, 26.01, 18.00, at Kanuti Gildi SAAL Cellar Hall (Pühavaimu 5). 

Exhibited are the works by the Design and Crafts MA and MACA students, accomplished within the frameworks of the Autumn semester course “Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene” led by Taavi Hallimäe and Sandra Kosorotova. The course kick-started with a short residency at MASSIA (Massiaru, Pärnumaa) and workshops by Sepideh Ardalani and Pire Sova, continued with seminars and individual work and is concluded with this public presentation at Kanuti Gildi SAAL. In addition to the six individual projects by each of the artists there will be presented a work communally produced by the artists and compost microorganisms — the outcome of the workshop by Pire Sova. 

Artists: Siew Ching Ang, Y. Derya Balkan, Zody Burke, Katarina Kruus, Viktor Kudriashov, Elle Kannike

Graphic designer: Agnes Isabelle Veevo

Alcoholic beverages for the opening are kindly offered by Sveta Bar. There will also be a non-alcoholic option in the form of kombucha tea brewed by the exhibition artist Elle Kannike.

The exhibition reading group will take place on Friday, 27.01, 17.00–19.00, led by the exhibition artist Siew Ching Ang.
Please get in touch with Siew if you would like to take part in this event: siew.ang@artun.ee

Opening hours:
27.–29.01, 13.00–19.00

Maria Erikson’s solo exhibition Soft Touch on the Deckle opens in Draakoni Gallery. 

At her present exhibition Soft Touch on the Deckle, the artist observes her relationship
with the process of graphic art involving the body of the artist and the lithographic limestone. Seeking parallels and contradictions between them a comparison is made between a body and its surface to the one of the stone. While attributing limestone with human skin-like ability to memorize, Erikson explores her personal artwork as a dialogue between the two bodies – the one of the artist and the one of the stone. Through material interactions and contact events new forms of co-existence and non-hierarchical ways of communication between them emerge. 

The surface of lithographic stone is smooth and porous. Similarly to skin it records the touch that stratifies over time. Lithographic liquid tusche is commonly used in Erikson’s artistic practice. Its dried coatings on the surface of the litho stone result in reticulation that can be seen as an abstract landscape. In this way the touch between the artist and the material as well as the stone´s geological strata are intertwined. 

Soft Touch on the Deckle is a three-part exhibition project – the first part is being
exhibited here in Draakoni gallery, the second one will be displayed in Ratamo gallery,
Jyväskylä in March 2023 and the third part will be held in the Museum of Lithography in Sweden in April 2023. 

Engagement and contact are central in Maria Erikson’s artistic practice. With the focus on materiality and materials as sets of relationships, she investigates visible and non-visible relations that are produced by the gestures between them. In new structural arrangements she investigates their jointness and indifferences, bodiliness and ability to
inhabit shared space. Maria Erikson has completed two-year studies as a collaborative lithography printer and holds a Master Printer certificate from Tamarind Institute (USA), obtained MA degree in the printmaking study area at the Academy of Fine Arts/Uniarts Helsinki (Finland). In 2019, Maria Erikson received the Eduard Wiiralt grant and in 2021
she was awarded with Ann-Margret Lindell Grant for Printmaking (Sweden). Among her recent exhibitions are Notes from Borderspace (ARS Project Space, 2022); Taidegrafiikan tapa olla – materiality, collaboration and agency (Exhibition Laboratory, Helsinki, 2021); Grafik (Gallery Sander, Norrköping, Sweden, 2021). 

Exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

The artist expresses her gratitude to: Liina Siib, Paul Rannik, Mart Saarepuu, department of Graphic Art at the Estonian Academy of Arts. 

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

Maria-Kristiina Ulas will open her personal exhibition Clue Whizzing from the Left in Hobusepea gallery at 18:00 on Wednesday, January 11th, 2023. Exhibition will stay open until February 6th, 2023. 

“Contingency can be enlightening, a quiet nudging towards the bright side. A fresh opportunity to understand despite the fact that the remains of memory are floating in the void. The vigor of comprehension vividly explodes, clues assist us to take a turn and not to stop, to move on, to change direction, your manner will change with ease and screech, way of life becomes alive, world view will be readjusted. Direct awakening within the flow of clues – a clue from the left, a clue from the right, from the top of one’s head and under the soles of one’s feet. Fresh allusions choose the vibrations of freedom, ripples of light, murmurs of water. Purposeless destiny is constantly being weighed again and again. Why does the devilish suspicion of criminal offence undermine the hollow skulls? Where does the wary fear come from?

Disgusting proliferating foul intolerable reek is belligerently tapping in the left ventricle of one’s mind but the implacable clue is whizzing by from the left and takes you to the awakened fields. Outside political efforts, above, beneath machinations, higher, deeper, there is a silent warm sea rippling inside, and will remain the keeper of all mornings. Clues take us to understandings and every understanding must be confirmed by a trace, otherwise it will disappear into thin air, will be lost in non-existence, will be forgotten and one cannot reach it any more. A human being – an alert beast.”

Maria-Kristiina Ulas

Maria-Kristiina Ulas graduated from the department of graphic art at the Estonian Academy of Arts in 1991 while following the footprints of both of her parents – her mother Concordia Klar (1938–2004) and father Peeter Ulas (1934–2008) were well-known Estonian graphic artists.

Already during her academic studies Maria-Kristiina Ulas excelled at her extraordinarily unique drawing – this diverse medium has remained Ulas’s main expressive means until the present day. Maria-Kristiina Ulas’s emergence in Estonian art life in 1990s coincided with the pivotal era of changing paradigms. On one side, her artistic nature fitted well with the mythologicalness and neoexpressionistic powerful figurativeness of the second half of 1980s; on the other side, the borders of art were broadening and new freedom arrived both in formats and techniques. Ulas expanded the borders of drawing as an attribute of expression while powerfully bringing the medium to the fore among big art and giving common sketching, pre-work or study a wider dimension. Maria-Kristiina Ulas’ drawing manner, based on classical drawing, has been always free and improvisational, reminding of the style of Ado Vabbe. Her gigantic and colourful drawings, balancing on the verge of figurativeness and abstraction, immediately caught attention and received acknowledgement. Later, Ulas’s figurative world, charged with playfulness and unconcealed eroticism, has increasingly acquired mysticism and surreal elements. With theatrical downrightness, the artist has developed her unique style of self-mythology while creating startling characters and enchanting loaded compositions where the expressiveness of line prevails over colourful surface.

Maria-Kristiina Ulas’ artwork were first publicly displayed in 1988. Since then, she has held around twenty personal exhibitions as well as participated in several group exhibitions both in Estonia and abroad. For many years, Ulas has been worked as a lecturer at the Estonian Academy of Arts and led several courses outside the institution as well as held drawing actions at the exhibition openings. She is a member of the Estonian Artists’ Association (since 1991) and the Association of Estonian Printmakers (since 1992). In 1989–1993 Ulas was a member of Uue Graafika Grupp. She received Kristjan Raud Art Award in 1992 and G Galerii Art Award in 2002. In 2006, Ulas was entitled with the Award of Noted Artist at the 12th Asian Art Biennial. In 2022, she was selected the Graphic Artist of the Year. Maria-Kristiina Ulas’ artwork are part of the collections of the Art Museum of Estonia and Tartu Art Museum.

Reeli Kõiv

Exhibition is supported by Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Vunder Skizze.

The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

‘One never sees the sun in a dream’ is the solo exhibition of artist Loora Kaubi.

It presents a selection of older sculptural works and paintings, new materials and video work, transformed in two spatial installations. The exhibition opens 12 January 2023 at 7 p.m. in the gallery of the historical sculpture building in Raja.

Kaubi brings together a body of work that deals with a continuous sensation of in-betweenness. At the core lies the practice of lingering: to last for a long time, or the delicate action of slowing down towards an end. When the artist pauses before the end, (and takes this final point out of the picture), her work stands still by tactics to escape the everyday, morbid habits and the impossible, yet intriguing attempt of an eternal sleep. She compares the body with a substance that will decompose as well as compose, actively dissolve, gather and shed the same things off again. What sensations are brought up during a persistent ‘not-doing’, and how can one feed and admire such a process?

The exhibition contains a performance of contemporary dancer Elle Viies. It is curated by Belgian, Tallinn-based curator Laura De Jaeger. The graphic design and visual identity is created by Taylor “Tex” Tehan.

Loora Kaubi (1998) is an artist working in Tallinn. He has acquired her bachelor’s degree in painting at the Estonian Academy of Arts and furthered his education in the sculpture department of the Vienna Academy of Arts. Kaubi’s practice revolves around the (female) body and the societal and social relations related to it. Wandering between the real and the fictional, in his works he approaches life as a spectacle and focuses on creating a scene through which to perform intense emotion. Kaubi has received the weekly prize of the Union of Estonian Young Contemporary Artists and has participated in exhibitions and performances in Tallinn, Narva, Haapsalu, Valga, Vienna and Põlva.

“Art and the City” – a live action play in Telliskivi Creative City – is inviting you to come and enquire what art and creativity do in a modern capitalist city. How is creativity and art used to make cities of today, who is the creative class and how can one enter the creative city? 

Urban studies and architecture students of EKA address the questions revolving around the role of creativity in a city via an immersive role play, inviting the player to see Telliskivi Creative City through seven different characters’ eyes. How would a retired worker of the former factory see the place today, when the citadelle of a secret factory with its monotonous work has been opened up into a diverse creative village with no walls around? How is it to be an artist in a gallery that doesn’t any more represent the value of art space as a critical force or antithesis but rather acts as a tiny particle in a greater creative soup? Or how could a young designer who recently moved to Estonia enter the area as a creative workforce, not merely a consumer? Etc, etc.

If you’re ready to play, meet us in Telliskivi on Sunday, 18. December between 12 and 3 PM. Come and win with us: there will be wonderful prizes for the best players! 

Lara Brener’s exhibition It Brittly Joints the Other’s
16.12.2022 – 22.12.2022
12:00 – 18:00
Vernissage on 15.12, 7 p.m.

It brittly joints the other’s is a reflection on the experience of translation and the meeting of displaced identities. Brener examines selftranslation, facing the other within and the border created through the contact between hybrid and ambiguous identities. The artist also reflects on displacement, playing with subtleties of text and exploring translation as the transposition of images and spaces, identities, languages, and experiences. 

Lara Brener is an artist and educator from São Paulo, Brazil. She holds both a Bachelor and a Licentiate degree in Visual Arts from Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado (FAAP) and is currently enrolled in the Master of Contemporary Art program in the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA). She participated in exhibitions in Brazil, Estonia, and Lithuania, and is also a teacher in Tallinn. In her practice, working mostly with text, printmaking, and photography, Brener builds cavernous images, dissolving narratives, with images boiling up but never being fully uncovered.