Category: Departments

Young Artist MA award
07.09.–23.09.2021
opening: 07.09, 5 PM

At the exhibition Hopscotch Aksel Haagensen and Triin Kerge will present elements from their respective childhoods. Both artists approach a broader analysis of memory through their own personal memories.

As a young child in Australia, Aksel drew a lot of birds. There were many birds in Australia and they were all so interesting and colourful and different. Recently, Aksel asked his mother which bird had been his favourite and his mother said there was no such thing, “… you liked them all!” He wasn’t simply fascinated by the common popular birds, instead drawing every bird he could, constantly. Haagensen is interested in the subtle otherness of being an Australian-Estonian.

As a young child, Triin visited her great aunt at Voka, Ida-Viru County. Her great aunt lived in an apartment building and from the window all one could see were prefabricated buildings, sandpits and climbing frames. From Voka, Triin remembers picking chamomile, a machine for walnut-shaped waffles and a dating show on television, which made everyone laugh. Recently Triin visited Voka and while walking towards the shop, she remembered that it was from that very shop that to her great delight a roly poly toy was bought for her. At the exhibiton Kerge looks at the nature and materiality of memories.

The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

Thanks to  Marika Alver, Saskia Lillepuu, Katarina Meister, Irmeli Terras, Marcin Teterycz, Tallinn University of Technology, Valge Kuup

Jaana Päeva, PhD student of the Estonian Academy of Arts, Curriculum of Art and Design, will defend her thesis ‘Everyday Companions. Meaning-Making Process Through Handbag Design’ („Igapäevased kaaslased. Tähendusloome protsess käekotidisaini näitel“) on the 9th of September 2021 at 15.00 at Põhja pst 7, room A501.

The defense will be held in English.
Please, register HERE

Supervisor: Dr Nithikul Nimkulrat (OCAD University)

External reviewers: Dr Rosita Nenno, Dr Malcolm Barnard (Loughborough University)

Opponent: Dr Malcolm Barnard

The subject of this thesis is handbag design. The recent decade has witnessed significant growth in the handbag market since handbags have become an essential everyday accessory, a portable manifestation rather than a functional product. The emphasis is on the cultural construction of the meanings of bags because handbags reflect changing everyday needs and the thinking of the time being relevant both on personal and cultural-historical levels. Handbags are the focus of this thesis and are taken as independent sculptural and functional objects that are close to but separate from the human body; the thesis concentrates on handbag design and designing and excludes the meaning-making involved in product marketing.

The doctoral thesis applies research through design and the semiotic approach to connect the past and the present of handbag design in order to explain the communicative potential and the cultural production of meanings of handbags through linkages between the physical characteristics of bags and their perception past and present. The study asks: How is it possible for a handbag to communicate meaning and how can the designer generate meanings in the handbag he/she designs?

The thesis presents three creative cases. The first case focuses on the novel characteristics of bag design; in particular, those considered innovations and their meanings. In contrast to the novel, the second creative case aims to define a classic bag and concentrates on the most enduring features of handbags. The third creative case focuses on the Estonian-origin handbag designs and the case aims to find specific features of handbag design, which can be identified as Estonian design, or that defines handbags as ‘local’.

Each creative case consists of three phases. First, the historical research examines handbag design in Estonia from 1918 to 1940. The historical period between the world wars was the first period of the independence of Estonia but, more importantly, the period bursting with innovative designing and first social rules towards carrying handbags, both locally and internationally, was chosen as the most inspiring and highly relevant in handbag history from the viewpoint of a designer and a practitioner. Second, the creative outcome of the cases includes three collections of bags whose design processes are informed by the most outstanding features from the historical analysis. The second phase explains the principles of the design process, describes and presents images of prototypes in detail and reflects on the bag making. The third phase collects and analyses contemporary feedback from respondents on the created handbags. Feedback observations and interviews allowed to compare past and present perceptions to detect characteristics of bags in which meanings have remained similar or changed over the years. Feedback analysis helps understand how handbags are perceived and interpreted, thus revealing the potential of meaning-making through handbag design.

Members of the Defence Council: Dr Liina Unt, Dr Anu Allas, Dr Kristi Kuusk, Prof Kirke Kangro, Prof Indrek Ibrus, Dr Danielle Wilde, Dr Kärt Ojavee, Dr Kristina Jõekalda

Please find the PhD thesis HERE

Animist Tallinn is a new annual animation festival that offers the audience an overview of the best contemporary films, values animation as an art form, promotes creative thinking and contributes to the distribution of Estonian animation.

The festival centre is located at the Estonian Academy of Arts, where film screenings, workshops, lectures and meetings with authors take place. Close by are several additional screening venues, the attractive and developing North Tallinn area with the city’s best cafes and party locations. Animist brings together animation enthusiasts and filmmakers in a relaxed atmosphere, creates an opportunity to exchange and generate ideas.

In addition to the international competition program, the festival aims to explore the connection between animation and other fields of life. The theme for 2021 is animation and anthropology. Experts in their field will dissect the topic at various film screenings and lectures.

20th August 2021 will also mark the 30th anniversary of the Estonian Restoration of Independence and Animist will celebrate this event with a special screening “The Free Line”.

The festival will also include screenings and events for families and children.

See the full programme here: https://animistfestival.eu/en/

Festival access is free for EKA students!

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/animisttallinn

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/animisttallinn/

The festival is organized by MTÜ Animist Tallinn.

On Friday, August 13th at 11.00, pre-reviewing of Art and Design programme PhD student Darja Poplitova’s exhibition “Tactilite: Stone that Tickles the Gaze“ will take place at Hobusepea gallery. Exhibition is part of the artistic (practice-based) doctoral thesis of Darja Popolitova.

Supervisors: Prof. Kadri Mälk and Dr. Raivo Kelomees
Pre-reviewers: Keiu Krikmann and Dr. Maarit Mäkelä (Aalto University)

Exhibition opening: 5 August, 6 PM
The exhibition is open from 5 August to 30 August 2021, 10-18 every day (except Tuesday)

If you come to the exhibition, you will receive:
1) a practical guide on how to create a silver jewellery yourself
2) —— ″ —— ″ —— ″ —— ″ how to invoke intimacy into your life
3) —— ″ —— ″ —— ″ —— ″ how to speak a foreign language without mistakes
4) —— ″ —— ″—— ″ —— ″ how to exercise self-control in dealing with a manipulator
5) —— ″ —— ″ —— ″ —— ″ how to make another person important
6) talisman as a gift (only on Wednesdays)

#C21witchcraft #contemporaryjewellery #technopaganism #hapticvisuality

Artist Darja Popolitova aims to mix ritual features of jewellery with the theme of digitality. At her show “Tactilite: Stone that Tickles the Gaze“ video works, jewellery, and installations create a fictional world where the witch Seraphita helps to cope with the frustrations of everyday life.

“Seraphita is a fictional character who helps me to expand the usual functions of jewellery. For example, to shoot the jewellery so that the viewer would be much more interested in watching a video clip rather than a stand-alone artifact attached to the stand,” the author notes.

Kelly Riggs, a contemporary critic and curator, writes about Darja’s work: “Though the physical jewellery objects are the crux of what Popolitova creates, they are also just a part of the total picture, or the collective persona she presents when she shares that jewellery online.”

Darja Popolitova was born in 1989 in Sillamäe and lives and works in Tallinn. She is also doing a PhD at Estonian Academy of Arts. Darja’s practice includes contemporary jewellery, digital craft and video art. Recently, Darja Popolitova has participated in exhibitions at the Museum Arnhem in Holland (2020), Art and Design Museum in New York (2019), the Kunstnerforbundet gallery in Oslo (2018). Darja Popolitova is represented by the following galleries: Marzee in Nijmegen, Beyond in Antwerp, and Door in Mariaheide. Her work is included in the collection of the Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design, Museum Arnhem, and private collections. The work of Darja Popolitova was awarded the Annual Awards of the Cultural Endowment of Estonia in 2020, scholarships of the Ministry of Culture and Adamson-Eric in 2018. She also received the scholarship of Young Jewellery in 2015.

The exhibition is done in collaboration with Jakob Tulve (VFX) and Andres Nõlvak (sound design).

Artists’s gratude goes to: Aleksandr Popolitova and Nadežda Popolitova, Ando Naulainen, Anastasia Dratšova, Doctoral School of Estonian Academy of Arts, Jewellery and Blacksmithing Department of EAA, Estonian Artists’ Association, Elnara Taidre, Karl Kivinurm, Kadri Mälk, Karmo Järv, Keiu Krikmann, Kristo Pachel, Norman Orro, Pire Sova, Raivo Kelomees.

Sponsors: Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Academy of Arts, Moe OÜ, Õllenaut OÜ, Hobusepea Gallery, Orbital Vox Studios.

??? Summer School is a week-long experimental workshop with a focus on type design and typography, taking place on August 15-22 in the beautiful countryside of Oandu village, Lahemaa National Park, Estonia.

Typography is often closely related to the urban environment but ??? Summer School aims at finding new methods and inspiration in the practice of typography by experimenting with it in rural Estonia.

??? Summer School is being held for the 2nd time and the theme of 2021 is: GRAVITY.

We welcome graphic designers, artists, architects, theorists, critics, curators and everyone else interested to participate.

Our tutors are Laura Linsi & Roland Reemaa (UK/EST) and César Rogers (FRA/NL) + guest lecturers.

Apply to ??? Summer School HERE

More info on our official website

Most current info on our Instagram account

All questions You can send here: info@qoqoqo.ee

From June 22nd, the exhibition “In your skin you carry me” by Jana Mašková can be viewed in the Showcase Gallery of the Department of Photography of the Estonian Academy of Arts. 

The exhibition will be open until August 1st and can be viewed 24/7.

Showcase gallery, Põhja pst. 35 / Rumbi 3, Tallinn, 10415
June 22 – August 1, 2021

We carry a lot of weight on our shoulders.
In our heads, our hands, our feet, our muscle memory, our skin.
It remembers people that do not have to be in our lives.
It remembers the touch, the feel, the taste, the warmth or the cold.
It remembers things we do not own anymore.
It remembers things we do not remember.
It is not just our mind. It is us as a whole.
One day, I do not have to be here, but you may remember how I felt.

Jana Mašková (b. 1999, CZ) is a Prague-based artist working mainly in video and photography mediums. Mašková is obtaining a bachelor’s degree from the Department of Installation in Public Spaces in the Faculty of Arts and Architecture of the Technical University of Liberec. Currently, she is doing her Erasmus exchange studies in the Department of Photography at the Estonian Academy of Arts.

Mašková has been studying multimedia and art since 2014, and previously her main methods were exploring digital technologies and postproduction. Her subject matter varies through many topics; primarily, she works with different intimate and public themes. Recently she has concentrated on portrait photography to capture different people’s presence and stories.

“Kakuke frying onions aka the kitchen side of graphic art” is an exhibition about food, imprints, collaboration and yellow paint.

On the menu:
The appetizer  à laserigraphy
The main course  typesetting and paper from TYPA
And for dessert, lithography.

The process stems from Catherine Brooks’ text “Three Ways To Use Yellow”. The workshop is transformed into a kitchen, with pigments, spices, cloth pieces and wooden letter boiling away in a witches cauldron. The artist- witches play around with recipes and try to understand the mystery of graphic art.

Collective Kakuke:
Eva Eller
Lilles
Maria Pruuden
Johanna Rannu
Kärt Heinvere
Pavel Dodatko
Adam
Anna Petruželovà

Supervisors: Britta Benno, Charlotte Biszewski, Maria Erikson, Liina Siib

EKA Department of Graphic Art, class of 1st year BA studies

Exhibition is supported by Estonian Artists’ Association

Starting from June 10, the group exhibition “Wet Hearts of Everyday Thoughts” will be open in Gallery Mihhail. The nomadic apartment gallery Mihhail will be located at Pae Street 57–39, Tallinn, and the exhibition is open by appointment.

The starting point of the exhibition “Wet Hearts of Everyday Thoughts” is, on the one hand, environmentally conscious gratitude for bodies of water as diverse habitats. On the other hand, the initial impulse of the exhibition is the posthumanist understanding of humans as aqueous beings whose life is dependent on water from birth to death. The exhibition brings together five artists whose works are linked by a common image—all of the works use a certain body of water or other liquid, in order to refer to personal thoughts and feelings related to various aspects of self-care, such as coping with emotional difficulties, pleasures, everyday rituals, and the embodied experience. The works on display talk about the relationship with oneself, one’s collective and the environment, and point out ways to make sense of one’s relationship with other living beings and bodies of water.

Participating artists: Anna Mari Liivrand, Heli Haav, Junny Yeung, Maryliis Teinfeldt-Grins and Sophie Durand
Curator: Brigit Arop
Graphic design: Sigrid Liira

The nomadic apartment gallery Mihhail, launched in Tallinn in the spring of 2016, is based on the motives of solidarity and communality. “Wet Hearts of Everyday Thoughts” is Mihhail’s sixth exhibition, which will bring the gallery space to the Lasnamäe district for the first time.

The exhibition is open by appointment until July 31.

Additional information: brigit.arop@artun.ee or call +372 5621 6259