Exhibitions

MARET SARAPU
FREE AND HELD
08.02.–04.03.2023
Draakoni gallery 
 
Curators: Kaisa Maasik and Berit Kaschan
Graphic design: Pamela Sume

On Tuesday, 7 February at 18.00 Maret Sarapu opens her solo exhibition Free and Held at Draakoni gallery. The exhibition is open until 4 March.

Maret Sarapu’s seventh solo exhibition looks at the question of how to be free and held. Through five artworks, the artist maps quotidian rituals and symbols, activities and stories that help to ensure our mental sharpness, emotional well-being and a sense of safety in everyday life. That is, focal points that help us make sense of life, prevent crises and find strength in the everyday.

The conceptual centre of the exhibition is simultaneously poetic and practical – on the one side, it allows the viewer to make their own everyday life more poetic and start consciously and playfully mapping out activities, events and ideas that provide support and strength. On the other side, this kind of poetisation has a thoroughly practical effect – conceptualisation and structuring of our routines grounds us and plays a significant role in achieving emotional well-being and maintaining our joie de vivre.

At the exhibition, the artist displays installations and objects: wall panels with nature motifs, mosaic trophies, glass “breaths” and sand boxes reminiscent of Japanese gardens on walls and around the exhibition space. Alongside these objects, the exhibition includes a set of postcards, inviting the viewer to discover their own everyday and internal landscapes through exercises of creative writing.

As part of Free and Held three thematic creative writing workshops led by Berit Kaschan will take place at Draakoni gallery. The workshops will be held on three consecutive Tuesdays – on 14, 21 and 28 February from 18.00 to 20.00.

Pre-registration is required.
Please register to the workshop no later than 12 February: kaisamaasik@gmail.com.

Participation fee: 10€.
Size of the group: 10 participants.
The workshop will be conducted in Estonian.

The exhibition is supported by the Estonian Ministry of Culture, the Cultural Endowment of Estonia and Liviko AS.

Thank you: Karel Koplimets, Maarin Ektermann and Prologue School, Sven Sapelson, Tiina Sarapu, Kairi Orgusaar, Kaie Vakepea

Maret Sarapu (1978) is an artist based in Tallinn. She has graduated from the Department of Glass Art at the Estonian Academy of Arts (BA 2002, MA 2005) and taken part in numerous courses and art residencies both in Estonia and abroad. In her work, Sarapu is mostly inspired by everyday life and often uses nature motifs and repetition. Recently, her experiments with form and concept have led her towards methods like automatic and stream of consciousness writing. Often, the aim is to achieve mental well-being and find harmony between intelligence and emotions. Her alternating process (thinking, writing, working in the studio) and collaboration with material lead to results that give both the artist and the viewer a possibility to make conclusions and generalisations.

Group exhibition ‘The Weak Fins of My Few Skills’

Pärnu City Gallery
Uus tn 4, Pärnu
2.–25.02.2023

The opening of the group exhibition ‘The Weak Fins of My Few Skills’ will take place on Wednesday, February 1st at 18.00 at Pärnu City Gallery.

The group exhibition ‘The Weak Fins of My Few Skills’ doesn’t seek to give an exhaustive answer to the question of how to live. Rather, it tries its best not to sink while exercising empathy towards its favorite subject – the “water”. According to David Foster Wallace’s famous speech ‘This Is Water’, the “water” in the parable above means nothing more than the most obvious and important realities of our existence, which are nonetheless the hardest to see and talk about. To avoid becoming a living corpse in the daily grind, one must manage the hard-wired human setting of seeing oneself as the center of the world and actively choose to think differently. To choose to look at the “water” anew.

Participating artists: Laura De Jaeger, Joosep Kivimäe, Johannes Luik, Kaisa Maasik, Tiiu Maasik, Eva Mustonen and Mathias Väärsi
Project manager: Elo Meier
Graphic design: Pamela Sume

Supporters: Eesti Kultuurkapitali kujutava ja rakenduskunsti sihtkapital ja Pärnumaa ekspertgrupp, Jaanihanso Siidrivabrik, PERI AS, Pizzakiosk, Pärnu Linn

We thank: Estonia Medical Spa & Hotel, Karel Koplimets, Kusja, Mariel Värk, Nienke Fransen, Pärnu Jahtklubi, Villa Wesset

EKA’s Sensorial Design Research group is organizing a design research event at the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA) aiming to bring knowledge of international researchers to students, researchers, and educators of EKA on the 21st of February 2023.

During this event, two Art and Design PhD students of EKA, Arife Dila Demir and Nesli Hazal Oktay, welcome their peer reviewers and external PhD supervisors to EKA as speakers. Four speakers present their design research work, inviting the audience to discussion. The event is open to the public with a requirement to register. 

It is possible to participate both on-site at EKA (room A101) and watch the broadcast http://tv.artun.ee/.

Schedule (All times are Estonian) 

10:30 – 10:45 – Coffee

10:45 – 11:00 – Welcoming words

11:00 – 11:30 – Hsuan-Hsiu Hung, Estonian Academy of Arts

11:30 – 12:00 – Verena Fuchsberger, University of Salzburg, Austria

12:00 – 12:30 – Panel discussion: Hsuan-Hsiu Hung & Verena Fuchsberger, Moderator: Nesli Hazal Oktay

12:30 – 14:00 – Break for Lunch

14:00 – 14:30 – Claudia Núñez-Pacheco, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden

14:30 – 15:00 – Nithikul Nimkulrat, OCAD University, Canada

15:00 – 15:30 – Panel discussion: Claudia Núñez-Pacheco & Nithikul Nimkulrat, Moderator: Arife Dila Demir

The presenters: 

Hsuan-Hsiu Hung is a movement and dance artist from Taiwan. Her creative practice weaves together Qigong, somatics, visual art, contemplative practices and contemporary dance. In her creative research, she has been exploring the unfolding experiences of self as well as relationships with others (including the environment) through improvisational movement and dance. Since 2020, she has been invited by Mind and Life Europe to organise European Summer Research Institute and co-facilitate contemplative movement practices with philosophers, neuroscientists, researchers and contemplative practitioners in the Buddhist tradition. Currently, she is also a research assistant at the Faculty of Design of the Estonian Academy of Arts.

️Verena Fuchsberger is a Postdoc at the Center for Human-Computer Interaction, University of Salzburg. She has completed her Master’s Degree in Educational Sciences and Psychology at the University of Innsbruck and finished her PhD in HCI at the University of Salzburg. Some of her recent publications include “Heterogeneity in making: Findings, approaches, and reflections on inclusivity in making and makerspaces” (with D. Smit, N. França, C. Gerdenitsch, O. Jaques, J. Kowolik, G. Regal, and E. Roodbergen in Frontiers in Human Dynamics, 2023).

️Claudia Núñez-Pacheco is an interaction design researcher and artist, currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at both the division of Media Technology and Interaction Design and Digital Futures at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. She holds a PhD and a Master’s degree from the Sydney School of Design at the University of Sydney, in the area of interaction design. Her research investigates how bodily self-awareness can be used as a tool for human self-discovery as well as a generative crafting material for the design of aesthetic experiences.

️Nithikul Nimkulrat is a textile artist, designer, researcher, and educator originally from Bangkok, Thailand. Nithikul was educated as an industrial designer (BID) with knowledge of architectural design at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. Having worked as a designer in the textile industry in Thailand for three years, she relocated to Helsinki to pursue studies at Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture where she earned a Master of Arts in textile art and design in 2002 and a Doctor of Arts in design in 2009. Currently, she is the Acting Chair of the Material Art & Design program.

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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.