Category: Faculty of Design

GD Lecture Series is organized by EKA graphic design department, where various graphic designers are invited to speak about their life and practice.

Graphic designer and DJ Eleonora Šljanda will be visiting on April 4.

Eleonora has studied at both the Estonian Academy of Arts and the Gerrit Rietveld Academy.

The lecture will start at 5 p.m. at Estonian Academy of Arts in room C304.

Come and visit the exhibition Introduction to Estonian Design! Perhaps you can recognize some familiar objects? Tell us more about it!

The Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design (ETDM) invites you to contribute to the upcoming installation featuring visitors’ photographs and stories of design objects that can be found at homes and in the museum! Other objects that relate to the exhibition are also welcome.

Public programme and installation Do you have this at home? explores the wider context of design objects. We aim to raise awareness on local histories and form a more personal connection with the surrounding material culture. By showcasing how household items can become museum objects over time, the installation supports the further understanding of the museum’s collection and seeks to facilitate a conversation where varying voices can be heard.

Show us what you have:

1. Look around your home! Find out if there is/are some design object(s)
2. Take a picture of it
3. Think of any personal memories related to this object – traditions, rituals, how it became yours, anything nostalgic or very pragmatic. You can also consult and gather stories from your friends and family. Write down the story
4. Send us the photo and story via email to publik@etdm.ee or bring it to the museum reception at Lai 17, Tallinn

Selected contributions will be included in an installation in the permanent exhibition.

The public programme and installation is created in collaboration between the Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design (ETDM) and the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA), The Institute of Art History and Visual Culture.

Do you have this at home? is envisioned by students Ksenia Kovalenko, Maivi Kärginen-Kivi, Lilla Lukács, Paula Oberndorfer, and Johanna-Elisabeth Tärno.

Special thanks to Agnes Aljas, Rebecca Duclos, Hanna-Liis Kont, and Sandra Nuut.

Graphic design by Ott Kagovere

Exhibition design by Ulla Alla

The Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design (ETDM) has been collecting and contextualizing design for the past twenty years. There are about 18 000 pieces in the museum’s collection, which are the base to organize exhibitions, public and educational programmes.

On Thursday, 16th of March at 19:00, EKA Graphic Design and Product Design second year students open their collective exhibition ‘Randomness, where?’ at ARS Art Factory Studio 53/98.

The exhibition showcases works from more than 20 authors, who explore the theme of randomness and its many forms of expression through personal observations, discovering the beauty of the unpredictable. Can anything be truly random? Is unintended behaviour a human condition differentiating us from algorithms, and what kind of patterns arise when observing unexpected events over time.

Randomness is explored through a vast variety of mediums within the exhibition – such as installation, sculpture, photography, interactive pieces, light installation, sound etc.

The exhibition is open for only three days: 17th until 19th of March, from 13.00-18.00.

Artists: Anette Jaaniso, Beata Batejev, Diana Tammets, Hannah Eliel Allmann, Ilia Rotar, Ines Maria Uudam, Kaisa Uik, Karl-Alder Kuivjõgi, Karl-Egert Kartau, Karolin Eks, Kasper Korsen, Katrin Selin, Ljubov Terukova, Mariann Hendrikson, Marie Soosaar, Mark Uustalu, Markus Laanisto, Nelli Viisimaa, Oliver Udeküll, Pille-Riin Valk, Rasmus Einman, Risto Tepper, Robin Raspel, Ronald Trei

Graphic Design: Nelli Viisimaa, Diana Tammets

Mentor: Sten Saarits

Supported by Estonian Academy of Arts, Estonian Artists’ Association

Follow events at ARS Art Factory: www.arsfactory.ee
(ARS Art Factory is located at Pärnu mnt 154, Tallinn)

Kasia Fudakowski does an artist talk in which she talks about artist talks which she has done in the past, thereby dissecting and examining both her work, and her approach to speaking about her work, while commenting on the unwritten contract between performer and audience. At least, that is very much her intention.

Kasia Fudakowski (b. 1985, London, UK) lives and works in Berlin. She studied at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University, graduating in 2006 before moving to Berlin. Her diverse and playful practice, which includes sculpture, film, performance, and writing, explores social riddles through material encounters, surreal logic and comic theory. Her ever-expanding, life-long sculpture Continuouslessness, (2017–ongoing), employs a fixed modular system of connecting panels to allow for complete sculptural freedom within its rigid framework, and is intended to reach completion only in the event of the artist’s death. Often referring to the allure and danger of binary categorization and the subsequent absurdity that it unfolds in our political and social climate, her work reveals the discrepancies amongst cultural norms.

Her interest in the limitations of language is explored through her ongoing film series Word Count, (2016–ongoing) which takes as its premise a globally limiting law on the amount of permitted spoken words. Where she employs comic mechanisms, the tragic is never far behind, so that her work often hovers between the horrific and the comic. Frequently the target of her own attacks, she explores her own role as an artist and the stereotype thereof with both a seriousness and irreverence typical of her approach. Her long-term infatuation with failure, and redefining success, has resulted in a number of tragi-comic performances and pieces of writing.
kasiakasia.com

The talk will be in English. Kasia Fudakowski is in EKA to give a workshop to the Contemporary Art MA students and have tutorials with students from Graphic Design MA.

On Tuesday, March 14 at 17.30, Amsterdam-based artist Riet Wijnen will speak about her current research into the life and practice of painter and sculptor Saloua Raouda Choucair (1916–2017), one of the first abstract artists in Lebanon.

Choucair’s interests included genetic science, the infinite, the Arabic poetry form Qasida and Sufi philosophy. According to her, the Islamic rejection of the pictorial image led to the essential search for what one wanted to express, and was for her a fundamental way to understand Arabic intellectual thinking which she translated a.o. into abstract sculptures and paintings.

Wijnen visited the estate in Choucair’s last apartment in the Qatari neighbourhood in Beirut. There she was confronted by a large amount of works, photos and documents in French and Arabic, languages she does not speak, write nor read. This visit led to her development of non-linguistic research methods, an inquiry into how one might “speak nearby”* and position themselves in the work. Wijnen will share works and tools currently in development: a publication, sculptural dinnerware and a series of fermentation pots. These works will also feed into a fictional conversation with Choucair, which is part of a long term cycle, since 2015, titled Sixteen Conversations on Abstraction.
*Trinh T. Minh–ha

Riet Wijnen (b. 1988, Venray, NL, lives in Amsterdam) is an artist whose practice involves sculpture, photograms, text, woodcuts and more recently type design. She is interested in incomplete histories of abstraction, what and who are already registered in history, along with the known and unknown ways of making history. To do this, she looks to elders, and in her work hosts practitioners from the past and present who have been active in the field of art during early modernism, or in science, philosophy, education and activism. She brings the practitioners together in fictional conversations and sculptures to reconsider histories and better understand what comes next. Wijnen uses perception, language and organisational structures.

This research comes together in the cycle Sixteen Conversations on Abstraction (2015) and publications related to language and biographies of female identifying modernists that provide sources for Wijnen’s practice while functioning independently. Publications include: Saloua Raouda Choucair (2023), Homophone Dictionary (2019), Grace Crowley (2019), Abstraction Création: Art non-figuratif (reprint and translation) (2014) and Marlow Moss (2013).

Wijnen has had solo exhibitions at venues including Kunstverein Milano (2022), Manifold Books, Amsterdam (2019); Lumen Travo, Amsterdam (2018); P/////AKT, Amsterdam (2016) and Dolores, Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam (2015). She was a resident at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten (2017–18), the Van Doesburg Huis in Paris (2022), EKWC in Oisterwijk, NL (2023) and has participated in groups shows at, among others, SculptureCenter, New York; 21st Biennale of Sydney; John Hansard Gallery, Southampton; The Center for Contemporary Art & Culture at PNCA, Portland; Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, Utrecht; and Index – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm. Wijnen teaches in the Graphic Design and TXT department of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam.
rietwijnen.nl

The lecture is in English. Riet Wijnen is in EKA to have tutorials with students from Contemporary Art MA and Graphic Design MA programs.

Dezeen is featuring our international collaborative project Algae for Design-led Transition Towards Blue Bio-economy and the exhibition Seaweed Ceremony.

Algae for Design-led Transition Towards Blue Bio-economy

“Over the years, the design and architecture faculties of the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA) have focused on local environments – from post-industrial landscapes to wild forests and the Baltic Sea.

“While focusing on process and experience-led methods in design education, EKA has been involved in the following ongoing project, including summer schools, fieldwork, laboratory experiments, exhibitions and published texts.

“The main objective of the joint projects is to realise the potential of what is emergent – to co-design alternative pathways for bio-economy development in the Nordic-Baltic region – while preserving the health and well-being of ecosystems.

Read more: 
https://www.dezeen.com/2023/02/27/estonian-academy-of-arts-algae-project-schoolshows/

Blue Bio-economy project is funded by Nordplus.

Craft Studies @ Scan Magazine

Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA): Develop your field at Estonia’s world-leading arts academy
By Lena Hunter

Inside the Craft Studies Master’s programme

The Craft Studies course is spearheaded by the interdisciplinary artists Juss Heinsalu and Kärt Ojavee, whose own practices in ceramics, smart textiles and broader material exploration shape the uniquely inquisitive curriculum. Accepting some ten students per year, the course offers a framework for drafting individual material-based practice and advancing critical thinking.

“It’s a heavily studio-based approach, composed of one-on-one mentoring, collaborative and unconventional learning experiences. In the contemporary world, studio practice is not something fixed. Nomadic aspects have to be considered. The crucial footwork – collective field trips – takes us to the local bogs, wild woods and coastal boundaries here by the Baltic Sea, as well as on journeys further afield,” explains Heinsalu.

…

Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA): Develop your field at Estonia’s world-leading arts academy

On February 9 at 15:00 EKA, the Latvian Academy of Arts and the University of Lapland joint curriculum Service Design Strategies and Innovations (SDSI) online information session.

Event on Facebook

You’ll meet representatives from Latvia, Estonia and Finland who will be answering your questions.

Admission is open until February 28.

Online applications are submitted through Dreamapply: https://apply.sdsi.ma/

More information on the program and admission is on our webpage: https://www.sdsi.ma/

For any urgent matters, you are welcome to contact us via email at info@sdsi.ma or messenger chat.