Foto: Andres Lõo
To celebrate the arrival of EKA’s 110th anniversary in the diverse creative environment of the academy, at the beginning of the birthday week, a rainbow-colored giant quilt of EKA’s fashion design alumni Lisette Sivardi and Karl Joonas Alamaa’s “stitchless January 10” campaign was hoisted in the atrium of the art academy.
On January 10, 2022, the action “stitchless January 10” organized by Lisette Sivard and Karl Joonas Alamaa took place in the center of Tallinn, together with the LGBT Association and Optimist Creative.
The rainbow flag, 23x13m in size and weighing tens of kilograms, sewn from several different types of fabric scraps, is a work completed in collaboration between Karl Joonas Alamaa and Lisette Sivardi, students of the Fashion Design Department of EKA.
The work symbolizes the image of a society where no one is left out. The whole does not have to be beautiful and uniform, but above all it has to stay together and complement and support each other. The flag was unfurled in action with the crowd on January 10, 2022, on Theatre Square in Tallinn. The cooperation of people was an important part of the meaning of the work, adding the power and contribution of real people to the flag as a symbol.
According to Lisette Sivard and Karl Joonas Alamaa, interaction, cooperation, altruism and empathy are hidden in the conceptual blanket of the giant blanket:
“The whole of a patchwork flag does not have to be the same, but above all it has to stay together and complement and support each other.”
The authors had the desire to create an action that would change the urban space of Tallinn in the fall of 2021. Burning debates had been left behind, but there were still unresolved issues concerning people’s freedoms and rights that needed benevolent intervention.
The action was also part of the “That’s fucked” exhibition about bullying of LGBT+ schoolchildren in Solaris in 2022.
The exhibition brought to the public harsh facts and heart-wrenching stories about the school experience of Estonian LGBT+ students. For example, it was found that 68% of LGBT+ students have experienced mental violence due to their gender self-expression.
