Do You Have This at Home?

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 25 March at 12.00, the third exhibition „The Skin of Reflections“ of the creative doctoral thesis by Sirja-Liisa Eelma, PhD student in art and design, will be pre-reviewed.
The peer review will take place in the large gallery of the Tartu Art House.
The exhibition will be open until 26 March.

The pre-reviewers are Dr. Elnara Taidre ja Peeter Talvistu
The thesis supervisor is Dr. Alari Allik.

This exhibition introduces Sirja-Liisa Eelma’s paintings completed in 2022 and 2023. The new artworks form a continuation of Eelma’s painting series Black Mirror, which was partly displayed at the exhibition of the same title by Sirja-Liisa Eelma and Tiina Sarapu in the Draakon gallery in summer 2022.

Read more: http://kunstimaja.ee/2023/02/sirja-liisa-eelma

On 21 March at 11.00, the second production „Memento“ of the creative doctoral thesis by Taavet Jansen, PhD student in art and design, will be pre-reviewed.

The peer review will take place in the Zoom, link HERE.

Hybrid production „Memento“ is a physical, poetic journey performed by three actors. Read more: https://elektron.art/projects/memento

The pre-reviewers are Dr. Elen Lotman and Dr. Raivo Kelomees.
The thesis supervisor is Dr. Anu Allas.

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.

On March 22, at 18:00, Helmut Völter’s open lecture “Cloud Studies”  in auditorium A-501.

In this illustrated talk, Berlin-based artist and graphic designer, Helmut Völter, will speak in depth about two projects, Cloud Studies and The Movement of Clouds Around Mount Fuji.

As a research project, Cloud Studies has taken both book and exhibition form as it probes the field of scientific cloud photography. The book follows the history of cloud imagery from the Swiss Alps in the 19th century to the first weather satellite in 1960. The Movement of Clouds Around Mount Fuji traces the work of the Japanese physicist Masanao Abe, who set up an observatory near Mount Fuji in 1927 in order to observe and document the shapes and movements of the mountain’s clouds using film and photography.

Helmut Völter is visiting EKA as a guest lecturer with “Among Clouds”, a MACA workshop week course.

Join us at Uus Rada Galerii on Tuesday March 7 at 7 p.m. for our Video Works Screening night. 

This public screening features video works made by 26 EKA students/artists including Lauri Lest, Rebeca Parbus, Laura De Jaeger, Mirjam Varik, Daria Kylm, Viktoria Martjanova, Łukasz Rygał, Andrea Gudiño, Paulina Belik, Noah Emanuel Morrison, Eva Eller, Sigrid Barranco Ballonga, Sarah Noonan, Jim Wolff, Inessa Saarits, Alina Birjuk, Raahel Rüütel, Kristel Zimmer, Kelli Tõnurist, Kirke Selirand, Lara Žagar, Inka Jerkku, Siew Ching Ang and Josefine Flora Green.

The videos were submitted in a non-juried open call for short experimental videos. There is an incredible variety of videos to come and see. We are excited to share them with everyone!

Free admission.
Soup will be available and you can bring your own drinks.

Uus Rada Galerii is located at Raja 11a.

For more details or questions email at uusrada@artun.ee or via
Instagram @uusrada 

Maria Izabella Lehtsaar & Sarah Nõmm open their duo exhibition Beauty in the Belly of the Beast in Draakon gallery at 18:00 on Wednesday, March 8th, 2023. Curators of the exhibition are Anita Kodanik and Brigit Arop. Exhibition will be open until April 1st, 2023.

With their duo exhibition Beauty in the Belly of the Beast, Maria Izabella Lehtsaar & Sarah Nõmm focus on their shared interests towards intimacy, sexual self-expression and various representations of love and violence between people. Current exhibition is based on the concept of bedroom as a place where one can rest, dream, feel pleasure and fear. It is also a place where one reads texts that shape us as human beings and creators and the place where meetings for this collaboration have taken place. The “bedroom activities” form a socially controversial subject. This place is intimate and reveals the nuances about us that are private and make us vulnerable. It is something that entirely belongs to oneself and at the same time is completely shared with the dearest ones. And yet, not all bedrooms are safe – besides softness, there could also be violence experienced under the roof of love.

The artworks at the present duo exhibition have been inspired by the contradictions related to the intimacy of a bedroom where the expressive means of tenderness and harshness are intertwined. For instance, Nõmm’s artwork “Little Switch” refers to a whip as an object with the purpose of hurting, that can be read in several ways. On one hand, it is an object of power and violence that is used for punishing disobedient bodies; on the other hand, the whip has its place in sexual practices where harshness, care and pleasure are combined. Lehtsaar’s new linocut works “Pillow Princess” and “Unknown Pleasures” continue expanding the artist’s visual queer vocabulary. “Loveless V” is their final addition to the series on the subject of boxing as self-defense and self-love, while also referring to their attempt to challenge gendered stigmatization of extreme or violent sports. Nõmm’s installation “Untie My Ribbons” is inspired by non-normative romantic relationships that won’t classify under the seemingly obligatory relationship form of monogamy. Through the cuddly weapons from the series “The Softest Touch” and the pictures completed by manual typesetting titled “Queer Scissors I II III”, Lehtsaar observes the world of signs related to lesbianism while in some cases using it for self-empowerment and in other cases ironically repeating uniform stereotypes to absurdity.

The stories of the interwoven destinies of a beauty and a beast are as old as our civilization. These usually begin with the imprisoned princess and end with marrying the prince who has killed the dragon. Sometimes these stories have also been told from the point of view of a princess with a higher agency, revealing for instance that the prince might be even more monstrous than the dragon, or that the princess could save herself on her own, or will choose another partner in life. Yet these stories won’t tell us anything about the daily life of the new couple nor the fact that there are beasts sleeping underneath their bed. Beauty in the Belly of the Beast attempts to offer more diverse narratives about intimacy and to enrich the common ground for mutual understanding while emphasizing the importance of safe experiences to people’s welfare.

Maria Izabella Lehtsaar (they/them) is an artist based in Tallinn who combines textiles, graphics, drawing, installation and text in their work. Their works deal mainly with the themes of queer experience and mental health, often playing on the fragile border between reality and fantasy. Lehtsaar graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts with a bachelor’s degree in Graphic Art and is currently studying in the Contemporary Art MA programme. In 2021, they were awarded the Edmund Valtman scholarship and in 2022, they were nominated for the AkzoNobel Art Prize with Sarah Nõmm.

Sarah Nõmm (she/her) is an artist based in Tallinn who works primarily with sculpture, installation, video and performance. Her work deals with the female body and the spaces surrounding it. Nõmm’s works are often based on personal experiences and look at themes of the body through popular beliefs, myths, taboos and everyday rituals. She has a bachelor’s degree in Sculpture and Installation from the Estonian Academy of Arts. In 2021, she was awarded the Young Sculptor Prize, in 2022 she was nominated for the AkzoNobel Art Prize with Maria Izabella Lehtsaar, and won the Eduard Wiiralt scholarship.

Anita Kodanik (she/her) is an Estonian-Ukrainian freelance art worker based in Tallinn. Her research and curatorial practice focus on the visual cultural expressions of collective and personal identity politics. Kodanik graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts with a bachelor’s degree in art history and is currently doing her master’s in curatorial studies. Her recent curatorial projects include exhibitions Imageries in Blanks (2022) at Maardu Decennial and Exercises for Dreamkeeping (2022) organised together with roam Berlin residency program.

Brigit Arop (she/her) is a freelance art worker based in Tallinn with a background in semiotics, who mainly curates and writes. She is interested in artistic practices that use poetry, material-sensitive approaches and humour to shift stale values. Arop has a bachelor’s degree in Semiotics and Cultural Theory from the University of Tartu, and is currently studying for a master’s degree in Curatorial Studies at the Estonian Academy of Arts. Her last curatorial project was the group exhibition Greetings, and Whatever Customarily Restores a Bond About to Break in Kogo Gallery, Tartu (2023).

Graphic design: Kertu Klementi

Supporters: Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Student Council of Estonian Academy of Arts
Special gratitude goes to: Anton Serdjukov, Karl-Christoph Rebane, department of graphic art at the Estonian Academy of Arts, Eda Urmet, Kristi Kongi, Marge Monko.

Exhibitions in Draakon gallery are supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Ministry of Culture and Liviko Ltd.