Exhibitions

On Thursday, 29 January at 6 PM, we will open the exhibition Greetings from Kanepi! Wish u were here by Birgit Kaleva, Keiu Maasik and Mark Raidpere at FOKU gallery.

A father’s diary from the 60s, postcards from Kanepi, Colin McRae Rally 2.0. Abstracted movements, run down household appliances, a ghost car. Driftwood Songs, a spider plant, a life stored in virtuality.

The works of Birgit Kaleva, Keiu Maasik and Mark Raidpere open up insights into the stories of family lines, or rather into fragments or excerpts of these stories. The (auto)biographical is intertwined with fiction, perhaps we cannot know for certain what is based on real life and what is imaginary – and maybe it doesn’t matter either.

In Birgit Kaleva’s photo series Weizenbergi 51 (2025), we see views of the artist’s birthplace in Kanepi – a parish in South Estonia – where she still lives with her parents. To work through the shame that stems from living with her parents, Kaleva directs her gaze to the space around her instead of hanging her head in embarassment. Keiu Maasik’s video work A Ghost Story (2022) tells the story of a son and father that took place in an old rally game. A story where after his father’s death, the son at some point found his father’s ghost car in the game – a seemingly living part of his father stored in virtuality. Mark Raidpere’s video Lachrimae/Driftwood Songs (2017) combines abstracted movements with the longing diaries of a young man written in the 1960s, Tõnu Kõrvits’s arrangement Driftwood Songs and seven tears, e.g John Dowland’s Lachrimae from the late 16th century.

The title of the exhibition is borrowed from the accompanying text of Birgit Kaleva’s work Weizenbergi 51 (2025).

The exhibition will remain open until 28 March 2026.


Birgit Kaleva (b. 1996), working under the artist name motoerotica, uses herself and her immediate surroundings as the basis of her artistic practice. Through a spontaneous and angular approach, she reframes autobiographical material, creating distance from personal experience and offering a clearer perspective on its underlying structures. Her work is informed by an interest in visual rawness and awkwardness in unexpected compositions. Kaleva graduated from the Pallas University of Applied Sciences with a degree in Photography (2024).

Keiu Maasik (b. 1992) has degrees in Photography (BA) and Contemporary Art (MA) from the Estonian Academy of Arts. In her work, she has explored themes such as the impact of documentation on memory, identity and interpersonal relationships. In her recent projects, Maasik has focused on the virtual world, using computer game recordings or similar aesthetics in her video works and installations to reveal the different aspects of virtual life. She is one of the nominees of the Köler Prize 2026. 

Mark Raidpere (b. 1975) is a photographer and video artist, exploring the dilemmas and fears of the human soul, insurmountable loneliness and the tragedy of fate with great sensitivity and insight. Raidpere’s research often draws on his family’s universe, but sometimes takes on a social dimension, focusing on the marginalized, urban violence and street life. In 2005, Raidpere represented Estonia at the 51st Venice Biennale. His works have been exhibited in numerous international group and solo exhibitions and he has received several prestigious awards both in Estonia and abroad.

FOKU Gallery is a gallery-showroom focused on contemporary lens-based art. FOKU Gallery is run by the Estonian Union of Photography Artists (FOKU).


Supporters:
Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Peenjoogivabrik Nudist

Partner:
Rüki galerii

Technical support:
Reigo Nahksepp

Thanks to:
Artproof, EKA Gallery, Estonian Artists’ Association, Karel Koplimets, Kaisa Maasik-Koplimets, Madis Kurss, Tõnu Kõrvits

Lisette Lepik’s solo exhibition “Firm & soft. Soft & firm” will open at Haapsalu City Gallery on 5th of February at 7pm.

Inspired by autobiographical material the exhibition deals with themes of gender roles in intimate relationships. Visitors will see emotionally charged paintings accompanied by a soundscape created for the exhibition, representing Lepik’s personal reflections and conversations with her mother and grandmother about their experiences within relationships and general family life.

The paintings are supported floor to ceiling by iron chains handcrafted by Lepik, representing the strongly held cultural and social baggage passed down between generations. The artworks within the exhibition act as a time machine through which one can observe the atmosphere of a 1990s city home in Mustamäe district or perhaps smell freshly cut grass from a recently mowed 1970s lawn in Rapla city.

*

“When you think about that era, showing your feelings wasn’t a normal thing to do. Especially for men. My mother showed her feelings more and respected her husband deeply.”

“He had to be obeyed at all times. When getting older, he became very strict.”

“We always had to do everything together with our parents. My mother knew how to properly preserve edibles for the winter. Those who did not have land to tend for lived a different life.”

“It was so nice to live together with my family.”

“I was impressed that he paid attention to me. He brought me flowers.”

“I had come to realize that I could only rely on myself.”

*

Gender roles in post-Soviet Estonia were heavily influenced by the Soviet era, where women were expected to be responsible for and maintain their household’s psychological and physical space. Men tended to fulfill active and successful roles outside of the home. However, thought and behavioural patterns within a society transform over time. In response to the rather narrow range of gender roles that were common during the Soviet era, new, more contemporary and free forms have emerged in today’s Estonia, such as the BDSM community. Within this framework individuals can choose a role with a specific character for themselves in a curated context.

Lisette Lepik: “I explore changes in gender roles and power dynamics through personal stories and photos of my family. Throughout the exhibition process I was inspired by BDSM communities. They provide an opportunity to reverse the roles and rethink expectations on different genders. Within this context power relations happen by mutual agreement. Roles — dominant or submissive, firm or soft — are chosen consciously and voluntarily, with prior communication regarding boundaries and desires being the norm. Power, control and submission does not mean oppression here, but rather trust.”

Lisette Lepik (b. 1999, Tallinn, EE) is an artist who creates paintings and installations. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Contemporary Art at the Estonian Academy of Arts and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Painting at the same university in 2022. She has also studied installation and sculpture at the Iceland Academy of the Arts (2019). Her work focuses on topics related to being a woman within contemporary society.

Lisette Lepik has actively participated in group exhibitions in Estonia, Iceland, Austria, and Lithuania. In 2025 she co-organised a duo exhibition with artist Kristina Kuzemko and curator Kaidi Ojasoo at Club Virgin, a strip club in Tallinn. In 2024 she held two duo exhibitions with painter Brenda Purtsak at the Monumental Gallery of Tartu Art House in Tartu and Hobusepea Gallery in Tallinn. She received the Estonian Academy of Arts’ “Õpi ja sära” scholarship in 2024 and the Helju Rossmann scholarship in 2025.

The exhibition team

Location: Haapsalu City Gallery, Posti street 3

Opening: 5.02.2026 at 7pm

Open: 6.02.2026–01.03.2026,Wed-Sun 12am–6pm

Curator: Liisi Kõuhkna

Soundscape for the exhibition: Rene Manivald Tamm

Graphic design: Cristopher Siniväli

Tech support: Agur Kruusing, Mattias Veller

Special thanks to: Virve Lepik, Liana Lepik, Nora Schmelter, Gerda Hansen, Bob Bicknell-Knight, Estonian Academy of Arts metalworking shop, Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Põhjala Brewery

From 3rd to 27th of February contemporary painter Brenda Purtsak’s solo exhibition “One day I shall be an abstract” will open for visit at ARS Art Factory showroom.

The self-portrait exhibition combines fragments of the artists selected family photos and and images of humans biological body collected into her mobile phone over the past years.

The artist and the concept of the exhibition has been influenced by the anatomical wax Venuses created by an Italian neurologist and wax artist Clemente Susini and Brenda’s personal complex challenges in recent years related to her physical health. The beautiful and adorned females internal organs created in the 18th century have been “cut open” in detail layer by layer for educational purposes. Ian Shank has written that such Venuses at the time were viewed as a microcosm of the Universe.

J. L. Borges has pointed out that the labyrinth is a metaphor for man and the universe, associated on a macro level with the center of the world and on a micro level with the human heart. The better you know the anatomy of the human body, the better you understand God’s own thoughts and his world. As if the eternity has been written into the human soul – every atom of oxygen in our lungs, carbon in our muscles, calcium in our bones, and iron in our blood was created in the stars before Mother Earth was born.

The main piece of the exhibition is a large-scale fragmented painting showing parts of the artist’s body, which describe the processes of healing and decay of the human body. The theme was born after years of battling physical illness and thoughts that arose after several operations. The paintings in the exhibition encourage viewers to think about what is the essence of a soul and what remains of us in the physical world after we pass. Within the paintings the environmental and physical landscapes that have surrounded us and will continue to do so will be at display. This provides input for creating connections between the two that are inevitable in our lives.

Brenda Purtsak (1994) has graduated her Master of Contemporary Art program in 2022 and a Bachelor’s degree in Painting (2020) both at the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA).

The central point of her creation is human and playfulness between the borders of abstraction and reality. Purtsak mainly uses painting as a medium of self-expression, and in this exhibition also uses oil pastels.

At the end of 2023, a large-scale personal exhibition “Birth” was held in the Project Room of the ARS Art Factory and an overview exhibition of of works in four years called “Incision” in Haapsalu City Gallery (2024). The last major solo exhibition took place in September 2025 at Artrovert gallery under the title “Distant veils”. Purtsak’s works have been featured in various exhibitions abroad, and her paintings and stained glass windows have been exhibited in the premises of the Estonian Embassy in Hague several times.

The exhibition team

Location: ARS Art Factory showroom, Pärnu mnt. 154

Open for visit 3.02-27.02.2026, Mon-Fri from 12am–6pm

Curator: Liisi Kõuhkna

Graphic design: Rainer Kasekivi

Support and thanks to: Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Artists Association, Indrek Köster, Ian Simon Märjama

Starting from the first week of January 2026, an exhibition of ideas for renewing standard school buildings will be on display in the lobby of the Estonian Academy of Arts.

The exhibition features works completed by 2nd and 3rd year architecture and urban design students in the 2025 autumn semester, illustrated by school models.

“The studio looked for ways to design an H-shaped Soviet-era standard school building into a modern school space. Five H-type school buildings were considered, located in locations with different population densities, environments, and spatial needs.
All solutions are diverse, but they also share similar features, which, when compared, can be used to establish more general architectural principles to modernize H-type school buildings.”

Supervisors of the “School Studio”: Kertu Johanna Jõeste, Tristan Krevald, Ra Martin Puhkan, Siim Tanel Tõnisson (studio TÄNA); Mart Kalm (theory, history)

You are warmly invited to the opening of the exhibition Imprint of Vulnerability on Friday, 16 January at 6 pm at Tallinn City Gallery.
 
The joint exhibition by Mari Männa and Maria Erikson approaches material as an active participant. Fragility and delicacy operate here as working methods: form emerges through cracking, breaking, and acts of care. Drying, deformation, and the formation of imprints are not deviations or failures, but part of a process through which material remembers, transforms, and shapes its own rhythm. The exhibition is curated by Madli Ljutjuk.
 
“Imprint of Vulnerability approaches fertility beyond biological or gender-defined terms. Here, fertility is understood as an existential condition: the capacity to change, to be receptive, and to remain within uncertainty. The exhibition invites viewers to experience fragility and delicacy not as weakness, but as sources of vitality and renewal, fostering a sense of connection to a bodily, cyclical understanding of life,” explains curator Madli Ljutjuk.
Working together for the first time, the artists approach the same question from different angles. In Männa’s works, a logic of emergence unfolds: the world is born from disintegration and transitional states in which life has not yet settled into its final form. Erikson begins with the wound – the moment when a surface is opened and forced to remember. For both artists, form is not an end point but a temporary condition, something still in the process of becoming.
 
Through sculptural and printmaking processes, the exhibition reveals how form emerges where something is broken or unfinished. Cracking, drying, imprinting, and deformation do not signify rupture, but a generative dynamic. The exhibition speaks of two modes of becoming – emergence and the wound – as different manifestations of the same process.
 
The exhibition is set against a world in which fixed boundaries are dissolving. The human no longer stands at the centre, but exists as one participant among bodies and materials in an entangled network. In such a world, fertility becomes receptivity – the ability to remain open even when the outcome is uncertain. Imprint of Vulnerability invites us to slow down and notice how life emerges precisely through interruption.
 
The exhibition will remain open until 5 April 2026.

12 Jan – 28 Feb 2026

In the exhibition “Gouaches and Other Graphic Notes,” animator-trained artist Francesco Rosso translates the technological world into a dreamlike, deeply self-reflective inner universe. The world he depicts is guided by disciplined meditation, manual control, and a far-reaching perspective that traces paths laid down by both his predecessors and future generations.

The Estonian Academy of Arts Library, with its atmosphere dense with thought, provides a safe and fitting environment for materials that are intimate by nature. The exhibition’s miniature format is introduced by an electromechanics study cheat sheet from the artist’s personal archive, dating back to his secondary school years. As a coping mechanism while obtaining the field of study, Rosso cultivated meticulous graphic models and writings to break through the curriculum.

Building on this experience, he developed a refined visual handwriting which, across twenty years of diary entries, forms a kind of knitted fabric. Alongside drawings depicting metaphysical matter on the pages of his diaries, he transforms the mental and physical notes of everyday life into visual material that becomes the seed for new techniques.

The gouache paintings in this exhibition serve as a means of testing ideas and developing seriality. Working with material for an animation film currently in progress, Rosso depicts environments gathered during expeditions through human-shaped landscapes. In these paintings, he addresses the accountability in transforming our living environment, the new sensations that accompany it, and its impact on our perception of the world.

Francesco Rosso’s solo exhibition “Gouaches and Other Graphic Notes” at the Estonian Academy of Arts Library presents works created since 2023 that have not previously been publicly exhibited. It is an exhibition that places time-resistant manual skills at its centre, within a context increasingly saturated with automated means of production. The exhibition is curated by Marika Agu from the Estonian Centre for Contemporary Art.

More information:


Rene Mäe


EKA Library

Francesco Rosso (b. 1987) is an animator and artist living and working in Tallinn. His practice explores the mental and physical aspects of everyday life, transforming them into visual material. Rosso devotes a great deal of time to hand-made animation and detailed drawing. He merges animated material with filmed footage collected during exploratory journeys in urban and natural environments. Over the past decade, Rosso has worked across numerous artistic fields, including illustration, film, analogue photography, painting, printmaking, poetry, video art, and various animation techniques. His short animated films have been shown to international audiences, including at festivals in Clermont-Ferrand, Hiroshima, L’Étrange, Hamburg, Seoul, Interfilm, and the Encounters Short Film Festival.

Marika Agu (b. 1989) is a curator and archive project manager at the Estonian Centre for Contemporary Art. Having studied semiotics, art theory, and library and information science, her curatorial practice focuses on creative work with archives, emphasising site- and time-specificity, interdisciplinarity, and symbolic as well as material shifts in the creation and perception of contemporary art. In addition to her curatorial work, Agu publishes articles in both Estonian and international outlets and works as a lecturer at the Estonian Academy of Arts.

Liisa Nurklik
WANDERING
Second floor of EKA Gallery 9.01.–15.02.2026
Open Tue–Sat 12–6 pm Sun 12–4 pm, free entry
Opening: Thursday, January 8 at 6 pm

Liisa Nurklik’s solo exhibition “Wandering” reflects on abstract painting and the accompanying desire to wander over a prolonged period of time. Explorations of color and surface allow one tone to smoothly shift into another; directions moving one way meet those moving oppositely. Playing with the boring of simplicity evokes a possibility for the painting to be longer looked at, lost and gradually rediscovered.

Liisa Nurklik is currently a third-year student of painting at the Estonian Academy of Arts. Her first solo exhibition “If I Were-a-Person” took place in the Showcase Gallery of the EKA library in the fall of 2025 and presented the viewer with a series of drawings made with charcoal, pastel and pencil, depicting various creatures and objects, skin and hair, and focused primarily on evoking a sense of the uncanny.

Exhibition texts by: Kirke Kits
Graphic design by: Sunny Lei
Technical support by: Ats Kruusing
The exhibitions at EKA Gallery are supported by the Sadolin Estonia.
Opening drinks from mirai™ and Põhjala Brewery.

WE NEED MORE INDOOR SPACES
Ground floor of EKA Gallery 9.01.–15.02.2026
Open Tue–Sat 12–6 pm Sun 12–4 pm, free entry
Opening: Thursday, January 8 at 6 pm

The group exhibition “We Need More Indoor Spaces” is catalysed by the moving process of Krulli Skate Hall, bringing together local and international artists from Tallinn’s skateboard scene, framing skateboarding as an art form. The makers of the exhibition want to draw attention to the availability of indoor skate parks in the inner city, in the hopes of opening more spaces for skaters.

Jaagup Mägi and Éric-Olivier Thériault, two artists studying installation and sculpture at the Estonian Academy of Arts, came together with the idea of temporarily transforming the gallery space into a gathering hub in honour of the perseverant local skateboarding culture. Working within the constraints of the gallery, their aim is to demonstrate how skateboarding, as an artistic practice, parallels contemporary art in many ways: through experimentation, resilience, and a strong DIY ethos. The exhibition seeks to channel that energy into a broader conversation: What could happen if greater awareness of indoor skateparks was fostered? If these creative environments built by skateboarders for skateboarders were more actively supported?

As part of the exhibition, in collaboration with the interactive video game museum LVLup! and Camille Laurelli, there will be an opportunity to play skateboarding-themed video games in the video box area of ​​the EKA Gallery during the opening times of the gallery.

You are welcome to ride the course with your personal skateboard at your own risk until February 11 on Wednesdays from 6 to 9 pm and Sundays from 4 to 8 pm.

Artists: Frank Abner, Nicolas Bouvy, Maik Grüner, Daniil Južaninov, Andrew Kuus-Hill, Kaisa Maasik, Jaagup Mägi, Reigo Nahksepp, Éric-Olivier Thériault, Raul Ulberg
Curators: Jaagup Mägi & Éric-Olivier Thériault
Graphic design: Sunny Lei
Technical support: Ats Kruusing
The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia and Sadolin Estonia.
Opening drinks from mirai™ and Põhjala Brewery.

Exhibition “Where u at? We in the know”

Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM)

Kursi 5, Tallinn

Mon – Sun 12.01. – 18.01.
13:00 – 19:00

Starting Monday, January 12th, the exhibition “Where u at? We in the know.” will open in the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM). The opening ceremony will take place a day later on Tuesday the 13th of January at 18:00

“Where u at? We in the know.” Meaning we’ve been allowed access to EKKM with it’s three floors. We’ve been offered help and benefits. Enough but not too much. Just enough to ward off fear in these spacious cold rooms.

And we in the know in the sense that we know what’s up. But are we IN the know? We would like to think we are. But who even is IN the know? A contemporary artist should be (by all rights). The president too. And the prime minister. But they have advisors. We don’t. We only have each other and this big cold building. And lots of thoughts. Concerning gender, taboos, underwear, the economy, childhood, hockey and refusal.

Participating artists:

Mari Karjus

Mikk Keis

August Kilmi

Olesja Prants

Rasmus Puksmann

Gen-Horret Rand

Katarina Kuningas

Greta Sauter

Grete Tuiken

Kaur Tõra

Gleb Volodtšenko

Viktoria Weiszova

Students of EVA Lab, the Experimental Video Games in Art laboratory of the Estonian Academy of Arts New Media Department, present their exhibition in a new gallery space inside the National Library of Estonia. Although the National Library or RaRa building itself will only reopen to the general public in 2027, this exhibition offers an early glimpse into a yet unnamed art space that has not previously existed and is being opened temporarily for this occasion.

*Important! Visits are only possible with a guide. Gathering takes place at the main entrance of RARA at the following times:

17.12 at 17:00, 17:30, 18:00 and 18:30

During the autumn semester, EVA Lab students explore video game and interactive art theory, engaged in conversations with artists and game makers, and were given an optional workshop for learning a game engine to support their development. Through these encounters, students were questioning how video games occupy an enormous role in global popular culture, yet discussions of “games” can still meet a complicated reception within the field of visual arts.

Within art education, students are expected to devote themselves to understanding and critically navigating visual culture. Meanwhile, their personal experiences with gaming often belong to the realms of leisure, hobbies, and everyday play. Activities not always granted the same artistic legitimacy. This tension informs the exhibition’s title, “I’m not playing games, I swear”, a statement that is both slightly defensive and quietly humorous, acknowledging how the vocabulary of games can feel out of place in certain art discourse.

For this exhibition, the supervisors invited students to articulate their own relationships with gaming and game culture. The works on display, spanning interactive and non-interactive formats, transform personal memories, play habits, aesthetic intuitions, and critical reflections into artistic responses that reimagine what games can mean within contemporary art. From introspective narratives to speculative systems, the exhibition presents a variery of approaches to thinking through games as more than pastime.

Rather than insisting that we are not playing, the exhibition asks what becomes possible when play, experimentation, and game culture are allowed to enter artistic practice on their own terms.

Participating artists: Lotta Karoliina Räsänen, Maria Cecilie Wrang-Rasmussen, Irmak Semiz, Sarah Riley, Robert Kapanen, Kimathi Agbanu, Filémon Aufort, Paul Rannik, Triin Mänd, Edward Mcgeorge Allport-Bryson, Rover Indigo Bertels

Supervisors: Camille Laurelli, Sten Saarits

Exhibition is supported by RaRa, EKA, EVA Lab, LVLup! Museum