Exhibitions

Tartu Illustration Festival (TIF) is taking place for the third time this year and, for the first time, as a two-day festival on September 25–26 at Aparaaditehas in Tartu.

The festival brings together illustrators, designers and visual artists from Estonia and elsewhere in Europe, welcoming professionals, students and anyone interested in illustration. TIF 2026 focuses on playful patterns, exploring textures, repetition and rhythm while encouraging experimentation with different techniques, materials and approaches. Over the two days, the programme includes hands-on workshops, talks and a panel discussion, with opportunities to create a board game using screen printing, make collages inspired by the architecture of Annelinn, take part in a croquis drawing session with dogs, and join a speed-meeting event for writers and illustrators.

Visitors can also explore the international exhibition “A Bright Memory” and an illustration market. Among the festival guests are Finnish pattern designer Lotta Maija, British illustrator and designer Ryan Chapman, and Slovenian picture-book illustrator Damijan Stepančič.

TIF is a meeting place where professionals and curious visitors can come together to explore the possibilities of visual storytelling and illustration.

More information: illustrationfestival.com

House of Negotiated Selves
Estonian Academy of Arts (EE)
Ars Electronica campus exhibition
Linz University of the Arts, Hauptplatz 8 (West Building)

House of Negotiated Selves explores the boundary between human autonomy and machine representation. As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly prevalent in mediating and shaping our interactions, creation, and decision-making, there is a constant negotiation taking place.

In response to the 2026 theme “NEGOTIATING HUMANITY – THE FUTURE BEGINS”, House of Negotiated Selves frames this negotiation as an embodied experience. Through the metaphor of the distorted mirrors of an amusement park, our own reflections appear similar, but ultimately deceive us. The installation asks when our reflection becomes a substitute and when a machine begins to speak for us.

Visitors enter a world where their presence is perceived and interpreted. At first, the system seems to be a mirror of their true selves and presence. Gradually, the reflection begins to wander, predicting, distorting, and misrepresenting the visitor. What begins as recognition becomes ambiguity and displacement. Rather than correcting one form of distortion, the work allows it to emerge, revealing to the visitor a disturbing experience of representation that no longer belongs to them.

House of Negotiating Selves explores AI-mediated representation and the erosion of human agency. Situated at the intersection of interaction design, critical AI research, and sensory art, the project translates an abstract discussion into a tangible experience that is not about what AI is, but rather how it will come to represent us, whether we agree with it or not.

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DANUBEN TRIANGLE

This year’s Ars Electronica team (Product Design + ixd students):

Paula Jürgens
Martin Orav
Tõnis Bender (IXD)
Kulla Kangur
Anett Elis Männil
Carina Schipai
Hendra Raud (IXD)
Sara De Simone (IXD)
Paul Pank
Markus Hunt
Gustav Villem Kalberg

Supervisors: Carol Tikerperi and Bob Bicknell-Knight

Support and assistance: Björn Koop, Kätlin Leokin, Kaspar Pulk

On Friday, 11 September, at 6pm, Editorial (Latako 3, Vilnius) will open the exhibition Familiar Stranger, curated by Milda Januševičiūtė. The exhibition is part of the Vilnius Gallery Weekend programme.

Familiar Stranger brings together works by Zuza Banasińska, Loora Kaubi, Sarah Neumann and Milda Januševičiūtė, to look at memory as an unstable process through which personal and collective identities are continually reconstructed. The exhibition lingers between family histories, inherited images, bodily memory and digital archives, asking what happens when the past reaches out through fragments: a story repeated by relatives, an image whose details no longer agree, a gesture inherited without explanation, or a file stored somewhere in the clouds. Memory here is less an archive of what happened, and more an ongoing negotiation between what is remembered, forgotten, altered and passed on.

The exhibition is interested in the shift between embodied and externalised memory. What was once held in stories, objects and bodies increasingly also exists on corporate servers, accessible through passwords, subscriptions and infrastructures that we rarely see. Forgetting may be a basic condition of being human; data storage has made it into a service.

Rather than treating memory as reliable evidence, Familiar Stranger considers how remembering is shaped by repetition, omission, technology, and the moment from which it looks back. The familiar can return slightly changed; someone else’s memory can quietly enter our own; an inherited story can feel simultaneously intimate and strangely foreign. The exhibition does not propose the recovery of an original, intact past. Instead, it asks how to live with what remains, what has already been rewritten, and what we choose, or allow other systems, to remember for us.

The exhibition can be seen at Editorial (Latako 3, Vilnius) until 24 October.

Familiar Stranger
Artists: Zuza Banasińska, Milda Januševičiūtė, Loora Kaubi, Sarah Neumann
Curator: Milda Januševičiūtė
Architect: Ona Juciūtė
Designer: Monika Janulevičiūtė
Language Editor: Joseph Everatt

The exhibition is funded by the Lithuanian Council for Culture
The exhibition will be accompanied by a programme of events: follow us for updates at www.editorial.lt.

Loora Kaubi’s and Erik Hõim’s joint exhibition “Cobbled together, stumbling” is open till October 4th in the Monumental Gallery of the Tartu Art House.

The exhibition is inspired by memories of various places and stories. These stories speak to age-old needs: how to be with people when they can no longer be with us, and how to say the words that have come too late.

We believe in that which we hope for. We believe that our memory will always shine with the same brightness. We believe that we will forever hold a place in this rapidly changing, aching world. Faith is a small and stubborn thing. It is a load which we bear. This faith can become a chapel-shaped house, not built in memory of a single person, but as a tribute to all those who have ever been longed for.

It is hard to say why mortal humans build houses for those who are no longer here, shelters in which one can continue to believe in the possibility of good, quiet worlds, filled with small gestures for humanity, cobbled together bit by bit from whatever happens to be at hand, without trying to adorn that which we still do not know, or force any meaning onto anything. But still, small stones, lines, pieces from familiar places say: someone was here. They did exist. And maybe in the end that is the meaning of faith: we hope that something stays.

Loora Kaubi (b. 1998) is an artist working in Tallinn. Her work explores themes of sleep, personal and collective memory and fatigue. Kaubi holds an MA in fine arts from the LUCA School Of Arts, a BA degree from the painting department of the Estonian Academy of Arts, has completed a portion of her studies in the Vienna Academy of Arts and did an internship in Mexico City.

Erik Hõim (b. 2001) has a bachelor’s degree in photography from the Estonian Academy of Arts and has furthered his studies in photography in Prague, at FAMU. He has received the Estonian Youth Contemporary Art Association’s weekly award, the audience award of the Summer Exhibition and has participated in exhibitions in Tallinn, Võru, Urbino and Prague. He is part of the fictional artist Uru Valter and a member of the Estonian Youth Contemporary Art Association.

Graphic design: Diandra Rebase

Thanks: Hanna Samoson, the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia, António Tainha, Mette Mari Kaljas and Deviis OÜ

The exhibition is being supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

Plastic bags are nowaday’s symbols of disposability, an object we associate with overconsumption and wastefulness. The plastic bag’s association with Western consumerism is precisely what made it an object of value during the Soviet period in Estonia. Behind the iron curtain, anything linked to the West was desirable because it signified modernity and freedom. The plastic bag thus became a currency, an accessory, a collectible and now, it’s a documentation of a bygone era.

The bags in this exhibition are originally from private collections and most of them are now in the collection of the Estonian Museum of Applied Arts and Design. They are examples of Estonian product design and applied graphic art, yet their designs also illustrate the daily culture of Soviet life in Estonia. The value that was attached to these bags was a reflection of its time which is remembered for its scarcity and repression. Our shift in perspective towards plastic bags reflects the shift in the world around us, both in everyday realities as well as political ideology. Plastic is known for its plasticity, its ability to shapeshift and morph. The reputation of plastic bags is plastic – it has changed from revolutionary wonder-material and object of desire to useless, disposable trash, associated with deteriorating over-production. In a way, every archive is plastic, because the way we see the objects is ever changing.

The texts of the exhibition are based on the supporting materials of the exhibition “Kile kotti! / Plastic into Bag!” which was shown at the Estonian National Museum and Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design in 2004 and 2005, especially the interviews conducted by Kristi Kaljumägi and the exhibition text written by Pille-Triin Männik.

Thank you to Helen Adamson, Kristi Kaljumägi, Marvi Meriniit, Anu Järs, Chloé Gourvennec, Eva Mahhov, Marit Hololei and Katri Kuus. Research for this project has been supported by the Estonian Cultural Endowment.

Graphic design by Chloé Gourvennec.

27.08 – 26.09.2026

Opening 27.08. 18:00

“An Island Is Not an Island. Shades of Dark Heritage” is the first exhibition of Urmo Vaikla’s practice-based doctoral research. It explores military architectural heritage in the context of Hiiumaa and its impact on the island’s landscape, local community, and collective memory.
Although island may appear separate and isolated, it has always been influenced by global political processes. Defensive lines and military installations were built on the Hiiumaa both before and during the First and Second World Wars. A rich military heritage also dates from the 50-year period of Soviet occupation, when the island was the westernmost border zone of the Soviet Empire. Traces of this history remain visible: boundary strips once ploughed and raked through the coastal forests, defensive trenches branching out like a capillary network, and barbed wire still scattered here and there. Countless bunkers, cannon positions of coastal batteries, border guard towers, and training grounds remain abandoned in the landscape, evoking a dark history embedded in the island’s natural environment.

Urmo Vaikla’s research focuses on spatial conditions in the aftermath of trauma, examining the persistence and adaptation of architectural heritage in the context of social and political change. The aim is to map and investigate spatial values and to seek answers to the questions of whether, and how, dark heritage can be interpreted and (re)used.

Methodologically, the exhibition project draws on two curated international creative residencies addressing military heritage—Time Lap and Pinhole—which took place at Kordon Art Residency on Hiiumaa between 2024 and 2026. The residency programmes explored political trauma through embodied (somatic) experience, personal objects, and individual experience. The exhibition is a visual and poetic synthesis of the material gathered and experienced during the residencies, together with the creative projects.

Artists participated in the residency program: Selina Bonelli, Thomas Reul , Alexander Petrounine, Anna Underowicz, Anu Pennanen, Kaisa Karvinen, Jona Kleinlein, Nelly Haag
Residency Program Curators: Urmo Vaikla, Tüüne-Kristin Vaikla
The exhibition is supported by: Eesti Kultuurkapital, Eesti Sisearhitektide Liit, ühendus Ruum ja Vorm

“STUDIO: EKA Architecture and Urban Planning Graduation Projects 2004–2026”
EKA Gallery 12.09.–11.10.2026
Open Tue–Sat 12–6 pm Sun 12–4 pm
Opening: Friday, September 11 at 6 pm

Architecture is one of the disciplines through which societies imagine alternatives to present conditions. In Estonia too, architecture students have for decades asked in their graduation projects what other lives could be possible for us. Characteristically for the discipline, answers have been sought through imaginative representations – drawings, models and texts.

The graduation project, a creative genre in which realisation is not expected, has allowed students to wander and stake out a place of their own in this strange territory between hard reality and pure imagination, starting from existing conditions, yet able to play out possibilities more freely, sometimes well beyond the bounds of realism.

From 2004 to 2026, EKA’s Department of Architecture and Urban Planning has supervised this work in the studio format. “STUDIO” situates this format within the broader history of architectural education and practice-based research, while looking back at the rich archive of graduation projects that have accumulated over these years. What have successive cohorts considered worthy of attention, investigation and change? What architectural responses have they imagined? And what role has the studio played in shaping such inquiry?

Curators: Eik Hermann, Andres Ojari, Toomas Tammis (Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, EKA)
Exhibition design: Andres Ojari, Toomas Tammis
Design of light boxes: Raul Kalvo (InPhysica Technology)
Graphic design: Stuudio Stuudio
Technical support: Ats Kruusing, Eugenio Marini, Éric-Olivier Thériault-Raymond

Thanks: all the supervisors and students of the EKA department of Architecture and Urban Planning 2004–2026, Sander Haugas, Oliver Kanniste, Mikk-Mait Kivi, Jevgeni Krassi, Priit Kõiv, Tiina Tammet, Avo Tragel

The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn City and Sadolin Estonia.
Opening drinks from mirai™ and Põhjala Brewery.

A joint exhibition by the EKA Textile Department and Kreenholm textile artists on the process of printed-fabric making

Opening at Narva Art Residency on September 5th 16:00, From Sketch to Printed Fabric brings together archival materials by Kreenholm textile artists and contemporary printed fabrics by students of the Estonian Academy of Arts.

The exhibition looks at the process behind printed textiles: how a repeat is constructed, how a sketch develops into a printable fabric, and how colour separation and registration shape the final result.

The exhibition presents works and archival materials by Kreenholm textile artists from 1960–2000, including sketches, repeats, colour studies, print proofs and fabrics. Alongside them are large-scale digital prints by EKA Textile Department students, designed in relation to Kreenholm’s historical repeat dimensions of 640 and 914 mm and bringing contemporary themes and perspectives into the exhibition.

An installative printing table with technical samples introduces the screen-printing process from idea to printed fabric. Visitors can also experiment with creating their own patterns and immediately see how they work in repetition.

Opening: 5 September 2026
Exhibition: 6 September 2026–10 January 2027
Location: Narva Art Residency (NART)

Curator: Alyona Movko-Mägi
Exhibition design: Eva Reiska

Works and archival materials by Kreenholm textile artists, 1960–2000

Estonian Academy of Arts, Department of Textile Design
Artists: Rosena Marju Melvin, Annabel Mustasaar, Ethel Noortoots, Karin Sarv, Hannah Parman, Katriin Tammoja, Getlin Tammoja, Eliisa Leppik, Marta Velda Loos, Freia Mugra, Lisandra Murumets, Helena-Mai Posti

Tutors: Krista Leesi and Piret Valk

Supporters and partners: Estonian Academy of Arts, EKA Textile Design, Cultural Endowment of Estonia / Eesti Kultuurkapital, Narva Art Residency (NART)

Narva Venice
3.–6.9.2026

In September the nomadic Pori Biennale takes place in Narva Venice (Kulgu), a striking post-industrial area in eastern Estonia, and imagines what a biennale could be when shaped by local histories, architectures and communities. Continuing Porin kulttuurisäätö collective’s long-term research into the biennial format, the project examines how a biennale might function as a site for co-existence, collaboration, activation and event. Art does not always need grandiose exhibition halls but rather people, who come together around it.

Artists: Baran Caginli (TR/FI), Kristin Wiking (FI/SE), Jonas Palekas (LT), Sashapasha: Pavel and Sasha Rotts (FI), Aksel Haagensen (EE) and Ulvi Haagensen (AU/EE) Cotyledon project: Helena Atkin (UK/EE) and Daria Titova (EE/UA).

Curators: Anna Jensen & Eliisa Suvanto, Porin kulttuurisäätö

Pori Biennale VII takes place alongside the music and city festival Station Narva that since 2018 fills Estonia’s easternmost city Narva with music, art, communal gatherings and cross-sector initiatives.

The event is kindly supported by Frame Contemporary Art Finland, Kone Foundation, The Finnish Cultural Foundation, Oskar Öflunds stiftelse, and created in collaboration with NART residency, Station Narva, Narva Gate, and the Finnish Institute in Estonia

Graphic design by Daria Titova.

On September 5 at 18:00, the exhibition “Who Gets a Seat at the Table” by August Kilmi and Ly-Ann Kõllo will open at Krulli SAAL.

The artists explore the dream of an ideal family, the expectations formed in childhood, and the disappointment that arises when a person feels there is no place for them within that dream. The exhibition examines family and home, and how a queer person fits—or does not fit—into these spaces.

The exhibition will be open until September 20, every day from 14:00 to 19:00.

Graphic design: Ly-Ann Kõllo