Okapi galerii, Niguliste 2, Tallinn
Start Date:
05.02.2026
Start Time:
18:00
End Date:
14.03.2026
Jakobson’s solo exhibition Downloads Folder creates a personal digital archive from random, hastily taken screenshots by preserving them on canvas.
The exhibition approaches painting as a way of remaining in continuous dialogue with a personal digital archive that was not originally intended for display. Through rapid circulation, the original purpose of downloaded files disappears; they persist more out of habit than meaning. The exhibition is concerned less with the images themselves than with their unsystematic accumulation and their slowing down through the act of being fixed in paint.
In a late-capitalist world oriented towards economic growth, productivity has become a sacred cow. Living within a constant flow of information, an ever-increasing pace of work, and social pressure demand more and more from us, without allowing time for reflection or interpretation. Transferring casually taken screenshots onto canvas is a conscious choice to slow down rather than rush, offering the possibility to organise what has been produced so far in a meaningful way and to take a pause.
The randomly selected images that form the basis of the paintings function as source material that is reworked through the artist’s process. The repetition of anonymous and temporary images through multiple layers of irony and subjectivity creates new images that no longer carry their former meaning and have lost their original, quickly consumable function.
Curator: Adrian Abner
Design: @gertworld
Anu Jakobson (b. 2005) is an Estonian visual artist currently in her second year of studies at the Estonian Academy of Arts. Her practice focuses on exploring online culture and its visual language, which she approaches through experimental painting methods, primarily using an airbrush. This technique allows her to capture the haziness and ephemerality characteristic of internet imagery. She works with images saved as screenshots from the internet and edits them according to her vision, in a way similar to how memes circulate, transferring this process onto the canvas. This method situates her work within the context of collective culture, as the circulation of memes reflects current events and broader value systems.
The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.