Category: Departments

Exhibition ”Narratives from Prolonged Engagements”
Marta Konovalov

The exhibition ”Narratives from Prolonged Engagements” investigates our relationships with clothing and textiles from the perspective of mending with the aim to widen the boundaries of a garment’s use time and aesthetics.
Here the creative practice of Marta Konovalov is being displayed alongside narratives embodied in wear and repair. This act of repair contributes to a system for the clothes to live their own life in the hands of the user or multiple users, each adding up a new layer. There is more than sustaining the physical form – repairing something is also an act of love, care and personal healing.
This exhibition explores how layers of repair can increase the emotional durability of fashion and textiles. It is a part of doctoral research on the topic of “Repair and Regenerative textile Design” at Estonian Academy of Art.

Marta Konovalov is a designer, researcher and an educator in the field of regenerative design. She is a PhD student at the Estonian Academy of Arts. She currently makes mending visible in her creative practice with the aim to remind repair as a philosophy and inspire others towards the act of repair for prolonging the use phase of textile artefacts.

The exhibition takes place at the At Trash to Trend Stuudio, Müürivahe 17, Tallinn, Estonia from 14.11.-12.12.2023
A public textile repair workshop is being held with the exhibition on 9.12.2023
Peer review event: 20.11.2023 Info HERE.

Reviewers: Louise Ravnløkke PhD, Marium Durrani DA
Supervisors: Kristi Kuusk PhD, Julia Valle Noronha DA

Photo: Kärt Petser / Aurelia Minev
Exhibition design: Maarja Viiding & Marta Konovalov

Critic and film curator Genevieve Yue (USA) will give an open lecture “Girl head: Feminism and Film Materiality” at 17.30 on November 20 in auditorium A-101, EKA.

Genevieve Yue is one of the curators of the artist film programme “Polar Coordinates” by Tallinn Photomonth, screened at PÖFF Expanded 2023 in Tallinn.

Genevieve Yue’s recent book Girl Head: Feminism and Film Materiality (Fordham University Press, 2020) explores how gender and sexual difference have been deeply embedded within film materiality. In rich archival and technical detail, Yue examines three sites of technical film production: the film laboratory, editing practices and the film archive. Within each site, she locates a common motif, the vanishing female body, which is transformed into material to be used in the making of a film. This talk will explore the book’s theory of gender and film materiality through readings of narrative film, early cinema, experimental film and moving image art.

Genevieve Yue is an associate professor of culture and media and director of the Screen Studies program at the New School.
She has programmed films at Anthology Film Archives, Metrograph, MassArt, and other venues.
Her essays and criticism have appeared in Mubi, Film Comment, Film Quarterly, and Reverse Shot, and she is author of Girl Head: Feminism and Film Materiality (Fordham University Press, 2021). She is based in New York City.

The lecture is organised in collaboration of Tallinn Photomonth and Contemporary Art MA program, EKA.

Additional information on Tallinn Photomonth’s film program: https://mailchi.mp/fotokuu/tallinn-photomonth-23-film-programme

On 20 November at 13.00 the peer review event of Marta Konovalov’s  exhibition “Narratives from Prolonged Engagements” will take place. Marta is a third year PhD student in Art and Design, exhibition is part of her artistic doctoral thesis.

Peer review event will be held in zoom: https://zoom.us/j/98954931902?pwd=K0RZWm1YcFhaR2tUcG50UHRuMFZvQT09

Meeting ID: 989 5493 1902 Passcode: 389968

Reviewers: Dr. Louise Ravnløkke (Kolding Design School), Dr. Marium Durrani
Supervisors: Dr. Kristi Kuusk (EKA), Dr. Julia Valle Noronha (Aalto University)

Exhibition design: Maarja Viiding & Marta Konovalov

The exhibition takes place at the At Trash to Trend Stuudio, Müürivahe 17, Tallinn, Estonia
from 14.11.-12.12.2023
A public textile repair workshop is being held with the exhibition on 9.12.2023

The exhibition ”Narratives from Prolonged Engagements” investigates our relationships with clothing and textiles from the perspective of mending with the aim to widen the boundaries of a garment’s use time and aesthetics.
Here the creative practice of Marta Konovalov is being displayed alongside narratives embodied in wear and repair. This act of repair contributes to a system for the clothes to live their own life in the hands of the user or multiple users, each adding up a new layer. There is more than sustaining the physical form – repairing something is also an act of love, care and personal healing.
This exhibition explores how layers of repair can increase the emotional durability of fashion and textiles. It is a part of doctoral research on the topic of “Repair and Regenerative textile Design” at Estonian Academy of Art.

Marta Konovalov is a designer, researcher and an educator in the field of regenerative design. She is a PhD student at the Estonian Academy of Arts. She currently makes mending visible in her creative practice with the aim to remind repair as a philosophy and inspire others towards the act of repair for prolonging the use phase of textile artefacts.

On Friday, 17 November at 5:00 p.m. Alice Kask and Neeme Külm will open their joint exhibition “Something Righter in This” in the large gallery of the Tartu Art House. 

The exhibition is seemingly a continuation of the show “In Vanity Alone”, which Alice and Neeme organised in the Tallinn City Gallery a year ago. At the same time, it is also not. While the selection at that time was firmly orchestrated by Neeme, who worked as a demiurge transforming the comprehensible space into an incomprehensible one, today the roles have been switched and Alice has reclaimed the space which she had surrendered to Neeme, filling it with her large paintings. Neeme has handed over the reins saying: “Let grace accompany our actions”.

In the gallery, the artists still work independently and on their own, sometimes in a hectic manner, but mostly very self-confidently. Their work, despite differences in their thinking, actions and choices of media, still, miraculously, function together as a strong whole. The powerful symbolism with which they work does not shatter, but increases this unity.

Neeme sows wedges into the walls like budding flowers, replaces the alarm button with pearls for his sweetheart, opens a cello case like a confession and fills an archaic confessional with texts from his journal. Hidden behind the declarations of love and the hints of reconciliation, he also gently establishes himself and keeps a watchful eye over the whole space. The gaze is casual but still present, because somebody has to gaze.

The unmistakable Alice, who only dares to speak about herself, transforms her paintings into the attributes of femininity, concentrating on a lone figure, on a single item, but full of tension and on a grandiose scale. Ruthlessly precise in what she is trying to show, straightforward in concealing what deserves to be hidden. Only nature is left outside Alice’s penetrating gaze: she looks at it from a distance and sees it as something bigger than herself. The dark and dreary elements can only be captured vaguely, recorded only from a distance. So complicated and, at the same time, also so simple. As sincere as possible.

“A certain uncompromising discomfort for the inevitable corporeality of human consciousness” is present in the “striking spatial-poetic ping-pong” which accompanies the exhibition of Alice Kask and Neeme Külm. These were the words of the art critic Hanno Soans a year ago and, lo and behold, they indeed still hold true.

Alice Kask (b. 1976) graduated in 2002 from the master’s programme in painting of the Estonian Academy of Arts. Since her major solo exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonian (2016), she has recently shown her works at the Helsinki Art Hall (2018) and Rüki Gallery (2020). In 2008, she had a solo exhibition in the Tartu Art Museum. Among other accolades, in 2003 she received the Konrad Mägi Award.

Neeme Külm (b. 1974) graduated in 1998 from the Department of Sculpture of the Estonian Academy of Arts and studied in 2003–2005 in the master’s programme of interdisciplinary arts at the same school. His most powerful solo exhibitions took place in the first half of the 2010s and his more recent group shows have existed on the border between architecture and visual arts. Külm was one of the founders of the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia.

The artists thank: Tamara Luuk, Kadri Villand, Johann Tanel Möldre, Lepo Külm, Berit Teeäär, Tiit Talvaru, Hilkka Hiiop and Päär Keedus.

The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

The exhibition is open until 17 December.

*A bus will run from Tallinn to the opening of the exhibition. More information and registration here: https://forms.gle/xmanLQ1YxnixyuKv5

www.kunstimaja.ee

facebook.com/kunstimaja

Tartu Art House (Vanemuise 26, Tartu, Estonia) Wed–Mon 12–18. Exhibitions are free of charge.

The exhibitions of the Tartu Art House are supported by the Tartu town government and the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

On Friday, 17 November at 5:00 p.m. Keiu Maasik will open her solo exhibition “Meadows of Change, a Place Called Home” in the monumental gallery of the Tartu Art House. 

The exhibition is about life in virtual reality and reflects on the possibility that human life may move there in the future. It also deals with the fear that this could happen and what we as humans would lose as a result.

For the past few years, the artist buried herself in the world of computer games and spent as much of her free time as possible in the virtual world. It seemed to be an acceptable thought exercise for her that in the future human life would move to the virtual world. One of the games she immersed herself in for several months was Red Dead Redemption 2. She felt like there was no other place she would rather be than in the world of RDR2. The game takes place in 1899 in America. The story follows the ventures of a gang of outlaws at a time when the Wild West is fading and civilization is encroaching. Their time is coming to an end and fear is in the air ahead of inevitable changes.

“I felt similar fear last year when I encountered a herd of wild horses. A rumble could be heard in the distance, and the ground beneath me shook gently. At some point, about twenty horses came into view, galloping at full speed through sea water. The horses and the powerful scenery seen in the game now seemed hollow in comparison. I want the world to move forward, but I don’t want to lose the galloping horses roaming about freely,” the artist explains.

Keiu Maasik (b. 1992) graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts with a bachelor’s degree in photography and a master’s degree in contemporary art. In 2019, she received the EKA Young Artist Award. In 2018, she received the Wiiralt scholarship and was the laureate of the competition Young Tartu of the Tartu Art Museum. In her work, she discusses the impact of documentation on memory, identity and relationships between people.

Graphic design: Anna Kaarma

The artist’s gratitude to: Madis Kurss and Kaisa Maasik 

The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

The exhibition is open until 17 December.

• A bus will run from Tallinn to the opening of the exhibition. More information and registration: https://forms.gle/xmanLQ1YxnixyuKv5

www.kunstimaja.ee

facebook.com/kunstimaja

Tartu Art House (Vanemuise 26, Tartu, Estonia) Wed–Mon 12–18. Exhibitions are free of charge.

The exhibitions of the Tartu Art House are supported by the Tartu town government and the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

Queering the Bimbo

Recently, we have borne witness to a resurgence of the bimbo archetype within popular culture. Despite its rooting in a non-gendered etymology, the term ‘bimbo’ is understood to be a slur aimed at attractive women who are deemed lascivious; their proclivity inherently paired with stupidity. Visually, the bimbo plays by the rules and expectations of patriarchy; women’s bodies are often the only thing rendered visible among the multitude of their human experience. Contrary to the lack of intelligence implied by the bimbo archetype, however, there are many examples to be seen of cultural figures embodying & using the shortcomings of the archetype to flip the script on contemporary gender discourse. From the failings of neoliberal girlboss feminism to the failings of binary views of womanhood, artists are beginning to utilize the bimbo trope to express a cognitive dissonance underpinning the expectations of femininity (and, by extension, masculinity) in the contemporary sphere.

Within this workshop, we will examine the phenomenon of performing hyperfemininity using cultural case studies and examples in contemporary art. We will discuss hyperfemininity’s capacity-versus-limitations to affect change within uneven hierarchies, and speculate on the bimbo archetype’s potential as a transformative/subversive subject and a conduit for queer/femme empowerment. As the verb form of queer, queering can refer to the act of taking something and looking at it through a lens that makes it strange or troubles it in some way. Can the bimbo be queered? Is this already happening?

Following the presentation and an open discussion, Zody Burke will guide a workshop using epoxy clay, for participants to create personal artworks. The participants will be guided to work with the medium that the artist often uses in her own works. The same materials are used in her installation at the Photo month´s main exhibition, Trance.

The workshop is limited to 12 participants, so we encourage you to register quickly to make sure you get a spot. The registration form can be found here: https://forms.gle/S3PyjvSWyAsAS1CDA

12.11 at 14.00 in Lasnamäe Pavilion

Discussion part at 14:00

Workshop part: 15:30

Artists: Aili Vint (EE), Daria Melnikova (LV), Kristel Saan (EE), Kristina Õllek (EE), Monika Varšavskaja (EE/FR), Morta Jonynaitė (LT), Viktorija Daniliauskaitė (LT)

Curator: Merilin Talumaa (EE)

The exhibition Breathing Through the Eyes at L’Atlas in Paris gathers together different generations of artists from the Baltic countries, most of them presenting their work in Paris for the first time.

The exhibition touches subtly on the ideas of Lithuanian-American archaeologist and anthropologist Marija Gimbutas, whose profound research brought attention to the ancient cultures of the Baltic region and the broader Indo-European world, especially well described in her book The Balts (1963). The exhibition takes its inspiration from Gimbutas’ ideas which have influenced contemporary perspectives on heritage, indigenous identities, and the relationship between humans and nature in the Baltic Sea area.

Research on the cross-disciplines of archaeological artefacts, linguistics, ethnography and folklore led Gimbutas to posit the thesis that prehistoric European culture was female-centred and worshipped a Mother Goddess as the giver of all life. The Goddess’ power was in water and stone, in cave and tomb, in animals and birds, in hills, trees and flowers. A spiritual sense of connectedness was artfully expressed through a sophisticated symbol system and an abundance of ritual objects. Nature and body (especially the female body) were honoured in Europe for tens of thousands of years. Women had an especially strong position in societies across Eastern and Central Europe – a tendency no longer necessarily evident today.

The exhibition Breathing through the eyes poetically comments on the fragile materiality of our being, multiple identities, the process of change and new environmental sensibility. Gimbutas, who having opened the treasure trove of prehistory, inspired a belief in a peaceful existence in our time – to bring back to life suppressed vital elements, such as the earth, the body (health), the feminine, and the subconscious. Participating artists, through imaginative and fictitious narratives, share personal stories and beliefs that also reflect the influence of Gimbutas’ theories on ancient symbolism. Their works echo these concepts through a contemporary lens, incorporating elements such as spirals, circles, and motifs such as snakes and birds – symbols rooted in ancient European matriarchal cultures that continue to resonate in Baltic art and culture.

The exhibition directs us to consider how we might reimagine a world centred around goddess worship, with its emphasis on preserving nature, nurturing existence, and forsaking warfare. Could this theoretical concept transcend into the tangible reality of our future society? Breathing through the eyes seamlessly intertwines historical narratives, cultural myths, and potential scenarios, immersing us in the themes that Marija Gimbutas ignited: the celebration of life’s cycles, the sanctity of the female body and labour, and the spirituality inherent in these concepts. Gimbutas’ exploration of the spiritual dimensions of a harmonious Old Europe and her vision for a New Europe free from dominance and warfare feels remarkably pertinent in our contemporary world.

Gastronomic performance: Monika Varšavskaja (EE/FR)

Exhibition setup: Daria Melnikova (LV)

Communication visuals: Gaile Pranckunaite (LT)

Exhibition stays open until December 22, 2023.

L’Atlas
4 Cour de l’île Louviers, 75004 Paris

Opening hours: Tuesday—Saturday, 12pm—7pm

Free entrance

Marija Gimbutas (1921–1994) was a Lithuanian-American archaeologist and anthropologist. She contributed to what is considered to be one of the most significant academic watershed moments in women’s studies with her archaeological and philosophical work on Neolithic culture and religion. Gimbutas is best known for her research into the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of “Old Europe,” a term she introduced. Old Europe referred to both the geographical area and social structures that existed before the Indo-European influence. Gimbutas unequivocally established the existence of a Goddess religion who is the most persistent feature in the archaeological record of the ancient world. The Goddess in all her manifestations was a symbol of the unity of all life in nature. ​​Gimbutas’ discoveries took on great symbolic importance for feminists across various disciplines who found, in her vision of a peaceful, nature-revering society, a sense of hope for the future based on this foundation in the distant past.

All the artworks in the exhibition “Total Jellification” are made of the same material – agar, a type of jelly that is made from seaweed. It is a natural material used for making desserts, puddings and custards, it is also used in microbiology for cultivating bacteria.

The exhibition “Total Jellification” is inspired by a phenomenon of jellification of the seas. A paper called “Jellification of Marine Ecosystems as a Likely Consequence of Overfishing Small Pelagic Fishes: Lessons from the Benguela” studies the consequences of overfishing in South Africa. Overfishing small pelagic fishes increases the biomass of jellyfishes. These small fishes can eat parts of jellyfish when they are not yet fully developed, but as they grow bigger, jellyfishes have virtually no predators. Thus the small fishes are important in managing the population of jellyfishes. The marine ecosystem has been completely transformed from the start of commercial fishing. But this isn’t only a problem for South Africa, the same processes have been discovered all around the globe and encounters with jellyfishes have also increased in the Baltic sea.

In this exhibition, jellification has been taken literally. Vent space has been transformed into an experimental space, where the possibilities of agar are explored. Agar jelly has been casted, moulded, dried, cut and for the opening the artist herself will also be jellified. The exhibition is an exploration of a quickly changing future, how to deal with the rapidly jellifying world.

The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Põhjala and Karksi Brewery.

On November 16 at 6 p.m Philipp Teufel from Düsseldorf will explore the questions of exhibiting design with the lecture “Exhibition Design. Exhibiting Design. Exhibiting Happiness”

The lecture gives a visual insight into the Master’s programme Exhibition design – EDI and a first glimpse of the latest project together with the Estonian Academy of Arts – a concept for the traveling exhibition ”Japanese Happiness”.

EDI, the Exhibition Design Institute of the Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences, is a joint institute of the departments of architecture and design that bundles research foci and academic work on the topics of exhibition design, scenic design and museum design. The Exhibition Design programme deals with the broad panorama of design in relation to communication in space in the context of exhibitions.

One focus of the institute is on the history of exhibitions and their design, especially in a socio-cultural context. The second focus is on the exhibiting of design. Questions in exhibiting design are: How does one deal with the decontextualisation of the exhibited? What conflicts arise when exhibiting design, when concepts meet concepts and design meets design? How can design objects communicate with the exhibition visitor? Are design exhibitions only elitist events by designers for designers? What are the objectives, ideas, concepts of design exhibitions? How to make sensual and haptic qualities of design objects accessible?

Professor Philipp Teufel studied visual communication and scenography at the HfG Gmünd University of Applied Sciences in Schwäbisch Gmünd. From 1985 to 1995, he was a partner at the conceptdesign agency in Frankfurt am Main. Until 2007, Teufel was a partner at the nowakteufelknyrim design studio, and from 2008 to 2017, he was managing director of the malsyteufel studio. As artistic consultant for scenography, he supported the Humboldt Forum in the Berlin Palace from 2010 to 2015. Philipp Teufel has been teaching and researching in the field of 3D communication at Hochschule Düsseldorf – University of Applied Sciences for more than 25 years and is currently a member of the Federal

Ministry of Finance’s Art Advisory Board. He has also been a jury member of Red Dot since 2015 and currently curates and designs exhibitions on the Anthropocene and on green urban living (“Grüntopia” and “Transition Now”).

Everyone from the fields of architecture, design, art, media and art research interested in the questions of exhibition design and exhibiting design are welcome to join! The lecture will be in English and is free of charge.

Further information:

Gregor Taul
gregor.taul@artun.ee
Lecturer
Department of Interior Architecture
Faculty of Architecture
Estonian Academy of Arts