International Urban Triennial CITYA

You are most welcome to visit the CITYA International Urban Art Triennial in Tallinn and through the web between 17.09. – 16.11.2021.

CITYA is a first-time art event that will take place every three years as a platform for city-to-city art sharing and as a new form of collaboration. The first CITYA will be themed “City as Medium”.

The event is organised in partnership with Hong Kong Baptist University (initiator), the Estonian Academy of Arts, the Beijing Academy of Fine Arts, the University of California Berkeley, the Belle Arti di Roma Academy and the University of Macau. CITYA is curated by Jenny Balisle (San Francisco), Janet Fong (Hong Kong), Kang Li (Beijing), Laura Scaringella (Rome), co-curators Reds Cheung, Kati Ots, Madis Luik and Liina Siib (Tallinn). Contributing to the CITYA Tallinn platform are Madli Kaljuste, Ulvi Haagensen, Liina Siib, Hans-Gunter Lock, Johannes Luik and Laura De Jaeger.

The CITYA programme will include digital events as well as physical events in all participating cities. To participate in the whole programme and for an overview of the event, visit citya.space (Program opens on Friday 17.09.)

Kati Ots, co-curator of the Tallinn programme of the art event, comments on this year’s first CITYA:

“This year’s Tallinn programme can be seen as an exhibition or a hideaway, a set of interventions or gestures of urban space art. In one way or another, both the preparatory process and the finished works have acted as an act of care or nurturing. The point of departure was the creation of refreshing points of contact and meeting places for both artists and city dwellers, in the context of the situation created by the coronavirus. The artists’ dialogue partners were the local residents of Tallinn, in the form of Lasnamäe residents and the architects of the Designers’ House, but also the plant networks between anonymous paving stones on traffic islands and the seemingly passive garden railings that act as rhythm-breakers or interruptions. In the initial phase, the artists’ ideas spread throughout the city, spilling out from the city centre as a hub to Lasnamäe, Maardu and Saunen. We treated the branching out as a process that could, among other things, visualise decentralisation and emphasise the change of focus that the pandemic conditions brought. In the process of mapping, the levels of ideas born at a distance and the tangible city have met and collided, testing the limits of our flexibility. Just as the artists and organisers who had been abroad at the beginning of the project returned to Estonia during the course of the work, the outputs of the ideas were strangely concentrated back in the central Tallinn area, despite our efforts. The tissues and sprouts that grew and grew as a result of the overall result are now lurking in the urban space of Tallinn.”

CITYA is supported by the European Regional Development Fund and the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

The CITYA Tallinn team includes and the event is co-curated by: Madis Luik, Liina Siib, Kati Ots, Reds Cheung.

Web address: citya.space