Category: Departments

Anders Härm, PhD candidate of the Estonian Academy of Arts, curriculum of Art History and Visual Culture, will defend his thesis „Disobedient Bodies. The Radical Performative Practices in Art and Culture of the 20th and 21st Centuries“ on 21st of February 2023 at 15.30 at Põhja pst 7, room A501.
The defense can be watched in EKA TV.

External reviewers: Dr. Madli Pesti (Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre), Dr. Jaak Tomberg (University of Tartu).
Opponent: Dr. Madli Pesti

The defense will be held in Estonian.

Members of the Defence Committee: Prof. Krista Kodres, Prof. Virve Sarapik, Dr. Anu Allas, Dr. Anneli Randla, Dr. Luule Epner, Prof. Marek Tamm, Prof. Eneken Laanes.

Please find the PhD thesis HERE.

A preparatory course for those interested in pursuing doctoral studies in practice based and/or artistic research in EKA will take place 20.02–17.03. Practice based and artistic research are based on the professional activity of the artist, designer and/or architect and result in new knowledge in the form of creative practice (ouvre, creative process, product, service, etc.) and written dissertation. The course introduces doctoral studies in EKA, its ongoing research and provides tips and guidelines for writing a doctoral project.

The course consists of seven meetings: four seminars, two thematic days and a final seminar where it is possible to get individual feedback on your project. The course will be led by Dr. Liina Unt, Head of the PhD Programme in Art and Design, Dr. Jaana Päeva, other lecturers include PhD students Ulvi Haagensen, Nesli Oktay and the guest lecturers on the thematic days.

The first thematic day, 21 February, focuses on design. The presenters include Dr. Oscar Tomico (ELISAVA School of Design and Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology), Dr. Verena Fuchsberger (University of Salzburg), Dr. Claudia Núñez-Pacheco (KTH Royal Institute of Technology), Dr. Nithikul Nimkulrat (OCAD University).

The traditional PhD Vitamin, on 10 March, will bring together experts from artistic and practice-based research and prospective doctoral candidates.

SCHEDULE
20.02 17.30-19.00
21.02 10.30-17.00 thematic day “Sensorial Design: Feel, Move, Interact!”
28.02 17.30-19.00
02.03 17.30-19.00
06.03 17.30-19.00
10.03 thematic day “PhD Vitamin” (info coming soon)
17.03 17.30-19.00

To participate, please send a short introduction (max 1.5 pages) to irene.hutsi@artun.ee by 13.02. The text should address your motivation, previous experience and the potential topic of your research. The number of places is limited, the acceptance will be confirmed by 15.02. The course will be held in English.

Meetings will take place in EKA at room A501 (except thematic days).

Additional info:

Info session on 8 February: doctoral studies at EKA

Conditions for admission to doctoral studies

Estonian Artistic Research Framework Agreement

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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This event will bring together current research on writing Ukrainian art history of the 20th century from scratch, since an art historical canon has not yet been produced for this period. Focusing on the Soviet and post-soviet eras, art historians Lizaveta German, Olga Balashova and Svitlana Biedarieva will present their ongoing research and reflect on how museums, exhibitions and artists have conceptualized these periods in art history writing until now. How has the National Art Museum of Ukraine—which is currently closed due to war—written and presented 20th-century Ukrainian art history? What can we learn from histories of exhibitions? What could parallels with other former post-Soviet countries, such as the Baltic States, contribute to revisiting this period? How is Ukraine to rewrite its art history after the war? Artist and researcher Andrij Bojarov will act as a respondent and Margaret Tali will moderate.This hybrid event will be hosted by the Institute of Art History in the Estonian Academy of Arts.

(Not) permanent exhibition at the National Art Museum of Ukraine

Olga Balashova

At the time of the gallery’s closure, the exhibition on the second floor of the National Art Museum in Kyiv was dedicated to 20th-century Ukrainian art. In the absence of a written history of art, we were always referring to this second floor for an up-to-date understanding of this history. Despite this influential role, however, the second-floor exhibition responded to the influence of external contexts, with the core museum team changing it three times during the past 20 years. The first non-Soviet exhibition had a strong national idea behind it, with a central narrative built around the Ukrainian Academy of Art, created in 1917 in the Ukrainian People’s Republic, and artists who were looking for peculiarities of the “Ukrainian style.” In the second exhibition, created after the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, the narration was more open for international interpretation, with a central focus on the avant-garde. The most recent change took place in 2020, just months before Covid-19 hit, with the narration dedicated to the idea of Modernism. The exhibition contained not only positive storytelling but also critical views of historical events and related art movements. After the war, the second-floor exhibition should change again. So far, it is difficult to say in which direction it will unfold, but it needs to include expertise from previous exhibitions and to consider the new post-war context.

We learn what we exhibit what we learn: Looking at art history from the perspective of exhibitions

Lizaveta German

Offering another perspective on how a particular art historical narrative can be (re)written, this presentation will focus on exhibition history as a method and elaborate on cases from two periods in Ukraine: the 1960s and the 1990s. Based on long-term research on both periods, Lizaveta will discuss how one can navigate through gaps in knowledge and lack of physical material, as well as how (and if) apocrypha can stimulate an alternative view of art history.

From this perspective, the former period—namely, the unofficial art of the so-called Ukrainian Sixtiers generation—can be roughly described as a period known through works which could never have been exhibited under the political circumstances of their time. Nor could they have been acquired for museum collections or entered the private art market, which generally didn’t exist in the USSR. As a result, monographic collections of the works of a number of the generation’s key artists have been well preserved in family estates and can be accessed for research. Yet, they have never been seen as subjects of a shared public discourse and have never been viewed as particles of the same space of artistic thought and vision by an external audience. While a good number of artworks from the 1990s—the period inaugurating the recent history of state independence—have long been scattered across anonymous public collections inside and outside Ukraine, others have physically disappeared due to their ephemeral nature or have remained beyond public and scholarly physical reach. Yet, there are somewhat chaotic but curious private documentary archives that cover the first curatorial endeavors to exhibit 1990s art in various non-institutional contexts. Today, this period can be interpreted through the way the art was presented rather than through the actual works.

Documenting Russia’s war on Ukraine in art, 2014–2022

Svitlana Biedarieva

The tensions related to the political changes and the war in Ukraine have provided an important background for a shift towards documentary practices in Ukrainian art after 2014, including film, video work, reportage, artist’s diaries and photography. The presentation will focus on the processes of documentation and creation of artistic archives following the beginning of the war through the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia from 2014. The presentation explores the changes in documentation practices with the recent escalation of violence and the simultaneous transformation of artists’ perspectives on war atrocities, historical memory, trauma and decoloniality. The presentation draws on the interdisciplinary approaches of the film researcher Erika Balsom, the curator Okwui Enwezor and the artist Hito Steyerl to analyze the transformative role of documentary art as a form that emerges in a state of war-related violence and mirrors the effects of the political and economic crisis. It is based on research conducted for the book Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art: Political and Social Perspectives, 1991–2021, edited by Biedarieva (ibidem Press, 2021). This recently published text is the first comparative volume to focus on the reflections of postcolonial transformation, contested history and resistance in Ukraine and the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), examining how these topics have been documented and interpreted in the art of these countries.

Olga Balashova is an art historian, curator and critic and the head of the Museum of Contemporary Art NGO in Kyiv.

Lizaveta German is a curator and art historian as well as a co-founder of The Naked Room, Kyiv, and co-curator of the Ukrainian Pavilion, 59th Venice Biennial.

Svitlana Biedarieva is an art historian with a focus on contemporary Ukrainian art, decoloniality and Russia’s war on Ukraine, and is the editor of Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art: Political and Social Perspectives, 1991–2021(2021) and At the Front Line: Ukrainian Art, 2013–2019 (2020).

Andrij Bojarov is a Ukrainian Estonian visual artist, independent curator and researcher who has, from the early 2000s, focused on exploring neglected histories of avant-garde art in the central European context, expanding and blending artistic and curatorial work with research practices.

Margaret Tali is an art historian and co-initiator of the project Communicating Difficult Pasts, which has brought together scholars and artists to revisit the 20th-century past in the broader Baltic region.

Lizaveta German and Olga Balashova are currently visiting researchers at EKA with support of the Estonian Research Council.

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.

Welcome to the presentation of two newly released Rooftop Press artists’ books with Jessie Bullivant and James Prevett. Please join us at the Estonian Academy of Arts, room A-501, on Tuesday 17.1. at 5-6.30pm for a conversation with the artists and publisher, Tuukka Kaila about the books and the processes behind them. The discussion will be in English, followed by a reading.

NB! Both books are available for purchase at the presentation (“Attached” 18 eur ja “Things for Homes/Homes for Things” 27 eur – cash only).

Attached by Jessie Bullivant

Attached is a collection of texts that document a diverse range of artworks made by Jessie Bullivant (AU/FI) over the past decade. By replacing the default photographic documentation with written accounts, the artist raises questions about how immaterial artworks are preserved, accessed and ultimately remembered, allowing space for nuances often lost in photographic documentation. As an incomplete survey of the artists’ work, the book blurs the boundaries between art and its documentation, between a conventional monograph and an experimental artist’s book. It gives an exciting glimpse into a committed artistic practice tackling a variety of issues from representation, power and access to subtle social interactions.

Contributing writers: Brendan Barnett, Yvonne Billimore, David Bullivant, Freja Bäckman, Christo Crocker, Mitchel Cumming, Eric Demetriou, Paul Doornbusch, Beau Emmet, Mark Friedlander, Max Hannus, Tim Holmes, Lou Hubbard, Anthony Johnson, Mikko Kuorinki, Katie Lenanton, Minna Miettilä, Even Minn, Paul Moses, Anna Parlane, James Prevett, Georgia Robenstone, Geoff Robinson, Ainslie Templeton.

Things for Homes / Homes for Things by James Prevett, co-published with TACO!

Can a sculpture survive in the home without being domesticated into just another object—a door stop or something you hang your hat on? What are the civic duties we assign to sculpture today, in comparison to the post-war nation-building and reassertion of civilisation? At the heart of Things for Homes / Homes for Things are conversations about our social relationship to objects and the spatial relations these depend on. Prevett’s enquiry is intimate and gentle, occurring as it does on a domestic scale in the homes of people who don’t own art, and perhaps have never cared for it that much before. Without the expectations and politics that grand publicness entails, it embraces instead the potential for social connection through making and giving of sculpture to strangers.

Contributors: Annie May Demozay, Mat Jenner, Jennifer Powell, Vidha Saumya, Eetu Viren, Vilma Pimenoff, Henni Alava, Sven Claes, Deborah Frimpong, Michael Pleasance, Paul Seymour, Dani Tagen, Riordan Tyson, Karstein Volle, Leena Ylä-Lyly

Jessie Bullivant (they/them) is a Helsinki-based artist, writer and cultural worker originally from so-called Australia. They make work with and about institutions and relationships. They completed a Master of Fine Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki in 2020, where their Master’s thesis work was a durational series of 26 emails, sent from their mother, excusing Jessie from presenting work in their graduate exhibition that day. Their current artistic research is funded by the Kone Foundation (2022-25).

Tuukka Kaila is a Helsinki-based artist operating in the expanded fields of photography and publishing. He is a co-founder of the artist-run publishing initiative Rooftop Press and founder of the nomadic artist’s book gathering Bookies. His works have been exhibited in museums and galleries across Europe, USA and China and belong to the public collections of the Finnish Museum of Contemporary Art (Kiasma), the National Libraries of Finland and Estonia and the Helsinki Art Museum (HAM) among others.

James Prevett makes things to gather around – objects, events, text, video, often combined together as sculpture. He is interested in sculpture as a means to explore the limits of minds and bodies, both personal and collective. He has exhibited widely, including in the UK, Finland, Thailand, USA, Austria and Brazil, and was part of a team that represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale of Architecture 2006. In 2021 he was awarded the inaugural Linnamo Prize, by the Olga and Vilho Linnamo Foundation. His works are in the Kiasma Finnish National Gallery collection as well as numerous private collections. James lives and works in Helsinki, Finland, where he is a Sculpture Lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts of Uniarts Helsinki.

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.

EKA Contemporary Art MA program invites prospective students to join the Online Open House on Monday, January 30, 2023 at 18.00 EET (local Estonian time). This will be an opportunity to hear more about the program, to meet and ask questions directly from the faculty. 

The Online Open House will be hosted on Zoom, the link will be e-mailed to all registrants 2 hours before the start of the event.

Register HERE