Exhibitions

On 19 June at 6 pm, Estonian Academy of Arts will open the graduation show TASE for the first time as an online exhibition.  The opening will be broadcast on ERR Cultural News portal, on EKA TV at live.artun.ee as well as Facebook Live channel.  Instead of a regular gallery space, the works of the fresh graduating architects, artists, designers, and researchers will be exhibited online at tase.artun.ee

Live TV show will begin here June 19 at 6PM

“The decision to hold the exhibition online stemmed from the special situation of the coronavirus.  The graduates had to adjust to the changes quickly and in many cases rethink their physical works or ideas,” explains the head organiser, gallery manager Pire Sova and adds:

“In a normal situation, most of the fine arts and many graduation works from other specialties are created considering the meeting of the audience and the work in a physical space.  In this case, they have tried to solve the task of how to relay their ideas with immediacy and optimally in the internet space.  Exhibiting works online brings many new questions: what type of documentation media to use, how to combine and support them with text etc?”

TASE’20 online exhibition will show more than two hundred graduation works from the graduates of the architecture, design, fine arts, and art culture faculties.  The exhibition gives a complete overview of master’s theses from all EKA specialties as well as most of the bachelor graduation works and portfolios.

According to the Dean of Fine Arts, Kirke Kangro, the isolation period was an especially big challenge for the graduating young artists:
“There was no access to studios and workshops, the works had to be completed in hallways and kitchens.  I am certain that this year’s graduates carry the footprint of the global moment more than ever before – either knowingly or through the creative process itself.  The audience, who otherwise was able to attend the defences in a physically limited space, are able to hear the young artists via their theses defences through an internet link.

The topics of the 46 diploma works are broad and as custom to artists, both empathetic and critical.  Introspection and the yearning for forest, the connection between local and expat Estonians with Australia – or even Siberia, the reflections of the world of justice, questions of the body and status,” says Kangro.

The largest faculty of EKA, the Design Faculty will bring 87 student works to the TASE web exhibition.

“We are proud of our graduates who despite the difficult situation were able to complete their Bachelor and Master’s works.  The projects in all our specialties are dense, the topics immensely wide: from clay musical instruments to the innovation of structural building, from board games to theoretical research that questions the core principles of design,” rejoices the Dean of Design, Kristjan Mändmaa.

The Faculty of Architecture is represented by 43 architecture Master’s and interior architecture Bachelor students.  The young architects engaged in the most serious and painful aspects of society: the space around the deathbed, prison, rehabilitation for juvenile delinquents, a more effective educational space for high school and so on.

In previous TASE exhibitions, the Art Culture master theses have remained a bit hidden among the creative objects, but the Dean Lilian Hansar hopes that the web exhibition will give a wonderful opportunity to find out more about the written theoretical works from art history, heritage and conservation, as well as art education.  44 graduates present their works at the show.

In August, 45 more graduation works will be added to the exhibition and on 17 August the regular TASE show will open in the EKA gallery and other spaces, but the online TASE will remain open as long as the internet lasts.

This year’s graduates have the advantage, compared to all previous years, to show and share their creations regardless of physical distances – to their relatives in the countryside or outside of the capital city, to the families of international graduates and potential colleagues at the other side of the world.

Come see TASE’20 on tase.artun.ee and join the opening ceremony on 19 June at 6 pm at live.artun.ee !

TASE Team
Head Organiser: Pire Sova
Communications: Solveig Jahnke, Mart Vainre
Graphic Design: Robin Siimann, Elisabeth Juusu, Kersti Heile; adviser Associate Professor Indrek Sirkel
TASE.artun.ee Web: WWW Stuudio

TASE is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia

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The exhibition Cat Show is opened in the Showcase Gallery of the Photography Department of the Estonian Academy of Arts from June 16, 2020. The artist Janne Lias explored in her work the Master Al feature added to her smartphone, which analyzes a scene in real-time, recognizes more than 500 objects and offers 19 different photo modes accordingly. A photo-distant person might find the modes offered to them confusing. Should wet acrylic painting be photographed in the same way as food? Or what is the difference between capturing a cat and a dog that these categories are highlighted separately? If the algorithm makes an error, it is amusing and reassuring – AI will not threaten human existence soon. Or should we be worried about the possibility of something that is at a rudimentary level can take power?

Cat show can be viewed 24/7 and it will be open until July 13, 2020.

Location: facade wall of the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM), Põhja pst. 35.

Graphic design of the Showcase Gallery is done by Mai Bauvald and Ran-Re Reimann.

The exhibition is open on from 22 May until 18 July, Tue-Sat 12–6 PM.

A group show featuring works by Ari King, Linda Spjut, Matilda Tjäder and Nikhil Vettukattil

Curators: Daniel Iinatti and Anna Sagström

Country Music is a collaborative project by Daniel Iinatti and Anna Sagström that is born on the factory floors of the rural rust belts, in the corrosive regress of life and tempo in downgraded de-industrialized wastelands and anti-growth environments, and in the urban steel knit of precarious compositions. An alloy of music and other cultural productions formed out of the potential energy of underused spaces to reimagine the contemporary periphery.

Ari King is a British Finnish photographer based in the French Pyrenees. His photographs depict natural phenomena, rural decline, and the convulsive effects of nature on humans. His work explores our attempts to navigate, synchronise, and make sense of its complex systems, channeling a unique tension between the natural and manufactured.

Linda Spjut is an artist, composer and nature value inventory taker. Starting 2020 she is the new coordinator for the program and artist residency at Sikas Art Center, where she also resides. Spjut’s work has been performed and exhibited worldwide. Recurring collaborations include ones with Trevor Lee Larson and Marcus Ekroth (STARVING/SHARON), Sandra Mujinga (NaEE Roberts/9Djinn), Erika Landström (IMPURE FICTION), Sophie Reinhold, Björn Runge et al.

Matilda Tjäder works with text that is directed, performed, sounded, and sculpted into varying forms of media. Observing the interface between fictional and real scenarios, she often works in collaborative and conversational constellations. She co-runs a speculative fiction writing group based in London. Other recent collaborations include a research project with Asta Meldal Lynge and Nikhil Vettukattil and four-hand piano pieces composed together with Alexander Pierce. Since 2018 she’s been cultivating the Wishing for More cycle; a world-building project with a fictional persona as narrator; a self-acclaimed real estate hero aspiring to build an inter-dimensional theme park with gateways leading to different zones. Each episode in this cycle takes place in a new zone. Recent and forthcoming projects include How To Show Up?, Amsterdam (2020), Speculative Place, Hong Kong (2020), 3236 RLS / Le Bourgeois, London (2020), sink.sexy (2019), LACA, Los Angeles (2019), The Geffen Contemporary, Los Angeles (2019), Damien & The Love Guru, Brussels (2019), and Cell Project Space, London (2018).

Nikhil Vettukattil is an artist and writer based in Oslo. His practice concerns the role of representation and image-making processes in framing and remaking lived experience. Using sound, moving image, sculpture, and text, his work often explores the ways art and cinema can mediate relations between everyday and historical experience. Recent exhibitions and projects include ’The Vapours’, at Kunstverein Bamberg, ‘Housewarming’ at Le Bourgeois, London, ‘An Analog for Listening’ for flatness.eu, ‘Extended Hours’ for Struktura.time, ‘Words Fail Me’ at Auto Italia, London, and ‘Cosmopolitan Universal Cinema’ at Arnolfini, Bristol, and Close-Up, London.

Supported by Nordic Culture Point, Embassy of Sweden in Tallinn, the Cultural Endowment of Estonia and A. Le Coq.

https://www.country-music.co/
https://www.artun.ee/ekagallery/

You are invited to the opening of the exhibition “This is not a labyrinth” on 11 March at 5 PM at the EKA Billboard Gallery. The gallery is located outside on the EKA building on Kotzebue street. The exhibition will remain open until 8 April.

Walking through the cities, they change into something else: it’s impossible to walk along the same street twice, the shadows and light are growing and shrinking on their own. We are lost since morning. Don’t let go. Don’t get lost. This is not anymore the place you came to.
Like in “Invisible Cities” by Italo Calvino, we show one city we visited together, but more so one city, we visited in our imaginations. “This is not a labyrinth” is a photo album about on day in a foggy dreamy place.

Graphic Art 3rd year students: Mark Hiir, Hanneleele Kaldmaa, Brit Kikas, Maria Izabella Lehtsaar, Riin Maide, Liis-Marleen Verilaskja

Supervisor: Liina Siib

You are invited to the opening of the exhibition “This is not a labyrinth” on 11 March at 5 PM at the EKA Billboard Gallery. The gallery is located outside on the EKA building on Kotzebue street. The exhibition will remain open until 8 April.

Walking through the cities, they change into something else: it’s impossible to walk along the same street twice, the shadows and light are growing and shrinking on their own. We are lost since morning. Don’t let go. Don’t get lost. This is not anymore the place you came to.
Like in “Invisible Cities” by Italo Calvino, we show one city we visited together, but more so one city, we visited in our imaginations. “This is not a labyrinth” is a photo album about on day in a foggy dreamy place.

Graphic Art 3rd year students: Mark Hiir, Hanneleele Kaldmaa, Brit Kikas, Maria Izabella Lehtsaar, Riin Maide, Liis-Marleen Verilaskja

Supervisor: Liina Siib

How would your smartphone apps look like if there was no touchscreen interface? Which senses would they need to stimulate in order for your interactions to be effective and purposeful? In a world saturated by visual and sounds, we decided to explore how we can interact with software while stimulating our “other” senses.

Taking a mindful approach to design, four teams accepted the challenge to re-think the way we interact with calendars, weather apps, mindfulness and room booking software.

The result is a pop up exhibition that will be in display for only one day in the Estonian Academy of Arts’s 1st floor atrium. There you will discover “off the screen” prototypes of apps, designed to bring people away from their phones and back into the real world.

Join us from 11:00 till 20:00 on Friday 6th to discuss Tangible Interactions, enjoy tangible welcome drinks at 19:00, and stay with us from 20:00 for a tangible party.

Hand sanitizer on us, beer on you!

artun.ee/IxD

My limbs are gods,

I am entirely a god,

no part of me is without

a god.

My limbs guide me,

My flesh forges the paths for me,

The gods have been transformed into my body

Lill Volmer’s exhibition “My Limbs” will open on the 1st of March at 7pm in Vent Space. The exhibition will stay open until the 9th of March.
Volmer’s “My limbs” is part of a continuing making that was initiated in the autumn of 2019 in Lista, Southern Norway. Installations exhibited are a result of the obsessive act of twisting and binding. They emit a compulsiveness that creates tension in the material while relieving tension in the body. The book that comes with the exhibition serves as both an epilogue to the works, but perhaps also as a synopsis of the exhibition.

Opening times:

01.03 – 19:00 opening
02.03 – 14.00 – 20.00
03.03 – 13.00 – 19.00
04.03 – 14.00 – 19.00
05.03 – 14.00 – 19.00
06.03 – 14.00 – 19.00
07.03 – 12.00 – 19.00
08.03 – 14.00 – 19.00
09.03 – 14.00 – 19.00

As our lives are more and more digitally controlled, our bodies’ relationship to the environment has also changed in profound ways. Laura Kuusk’s solo exhibition “Dear Algorithm,” curated by Niekolaas Johannes Lekkerkerk, explores the productive tension between our desire to adapt and survive on the one hand, and our resistance to the logic of codes, on the other. 

The exhibition will be open from February 20 at the Tallinn Art Hall Gallery. 

The exhibition Dear Algorithm, will be staged as a choreography of everyday movements: the window display becomes a shop front for hybrid-organic clothing sculptures, the gallery attendant simultaneously serves as perception manager, a library section will give further instructions on subverting social expectations, conditioning principles and behavioral patterns, a video installation presents three nonhuman actors that aim to grapple with and relate to human working environments, and lastly one may encounter some other-than-human entities that are in no one’s pockets.

The exhibition opening will take place on Wednesday, February 19th, at 18:00 and the show will remain open until March 29th.

On 27. February we invite you to experience the performance Catch Error Throw Exception by Laura Cemin that reflects upon the role of computational thinking and algorithms in our daily life. As a supplement to the exhibition, the artist invites viewers to visit reading sessions and kombucha tastings that will take place in the library section.

Laura Kuusk lives and works in Tallinn. Kuusk mainly uses photography, video and installation in her artistic practice. Most of her works have to do with recycling anthropological visual (found) materials. Kuusk is interested in the decision-making mechanisms within the collective consciousness. Over the last years, she has worked with the experience of the human body in the surrounding environment — in homes, in clothes, in relation to technology. In her work, Kuusk experiments with the visual traces of bodily experiences and their connection to larger socio-political processes. She studied at the Annecy Higher Art School (DSRA, 2014), the Estonian Academy of Arts (MA in Photography, 2008), and Tartu University (BA in Semiotics and Cultural Theory, 2005). Kuusk is a member of the ARS art factory in Tallinn (since 2015) and was a member of the art center OUI in Grenoble (2009-2015).

Niekolaas Johannes Lekkerkerk works as a curator and writer for The Office for Curating and is director of A Tale of a Tub, a not-for-profit art space in Rotterdam. Central to Lekkerkerk’s work are social and political discourses revolving around daily living and working practices, cultural norms, and ideologies. He particularly focuses on debates concerning the Anthropocene, ecology and climate, post-humanism, and the increasing entanglement between nature and culture. Lekkerkerk recently published The Standard Book of Noun-Verb Exhibition Grammar (Onomatopee, 2018) that analyses exhibition as an ecological assemblage. In 2012, he received the inaugural Demergon Curatorial Award, and in 2014 he was the beneficiary winner of the Akbank Sanat International Curator Competition.

Art Hall Gallery (Vabaduse väljak 6) is open Wednesday till Sunday 12–7pm. Entrance is free.

The Art Hall Foundation fund is a contemporary art establishment that presents exhibitions in three galleries on the central square of Tallinn – at Tallinn Art Hall and nearby at Tallinn City Gallery and the Art Hall Gallery. 

Join us for the opening of the exhibition “Maintenance Is a Drag (It Takes All the Fucking Time)” on Tuesday, 28 January at 6 pm. The exhibition will remain open until 8 February, Tue-Sat 12-6 pm.