Exhibitions

This exhibition looks back at sixty years of design education at the Estonian Academy of Arts. Sixty years ago, Professor Bruno Tomberg began teaching design under the name of industrial art at the then State Art Institute of the Estonian SSR.

The present-day departments of Product Design and Graphic Design both grew out of that programme. The exhibition brings together student works, photographs and other material from different periods. Together, they offer a fragmentary view of how design education has changed over time.

DH60 was organised in collaboration with EKA Museum.

Exhibition organised by: Design Faculty of EKA
Curators: Triin Jerlei & Raido-Riho Laasi
Exhibition design: Maria Pukk
Graphic design: Georg-Ander Sild
Typefaces: Trafarett (Aimur Takk) & Tallinn Grotesk (Tiit Jürna / Tüpokompanii)
Exhibition elements: Oliver Kanniste
Research: Birgit Tohter & Kai Vallikivi

Thanks to: Aili Ermel, Aleksander Metsamärt, Anne Pikkov, Arvo Pärenson, Björn Koop, Carol Tikerperi, Heikki Zoova, Ionel Lehari, Ivar Sakk, Jüri Kass, Kaspar Torn, Kristjan Mändmaa, Kätlin Kangur, Kätlin Leokin, Lauri Hirvesaar, Marite Kuus-Hill, Martin Pärn, Masayo Ave, Matti Õunapuu, Mihkel Masso, Mihkel Mäll, Ott Kagovere, Pent Talvet, Piret-Klea Velleste, Pärtel Eelmere, BTO26 students, Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design

Permalink

The curators of the exhibition “A chair, a door, a rose, a spoon” Kati Saarits and Hannah Segerkrantz will lead two guided tours on Friday, October 30 at EKA Gallery:
– At 6.30–7.15 pm in Estonian
– At 7.15–8 pm in English

Participation is free of charge.

Read more about the exhibition here.

The exhibition will remain open until November 22.

Permalink

“Sild/Silta”
Kuva/Tila, Helsinki, Finland
23.10.–15.11.2026
Open Tue–Sun 11–18, free entry
Opening: Thu, 22.10. at 5 pm

The exhibition, “Sild/Silta” (Bridge), brings together twenty two students from the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA) and Uniarts Helsinki’s Academy of Fine Arts (KuvA), creating connections between artistic practices and learning environments across the Gulf of Finland.

The exhibition explores the idea of a bridge as both a physical structure and a metaphor for encounter. Through shared exhibition-making, students build relationships between two neighbouring countries and two academies. The process encourages dialogue, mutual learning, and an exchange of experiences that extend beyond individual artworks. By learning how another academy presents and discusses contemporary art, students gain insight into the wider cultural contexts that shape artistic production and public engagement.

In October 2026, students from both academies come together at Kuva/Tila to present the first half of a collaboration in a shared exhibition space. The collaboration will continue in January 2027, when the same group of students presents a second exhibition at the EKA Gallery in Tallinn. Together, these two exhibitions form a living bridge (Silta, Sild) between Finland and Estonia, allowing artistic ideas, working methods, and cultural experiences to travel in both directions.

Participating artists: Eeva-Liisa Anttila, Cecilia Ebbe Belinskij, Vita Edvards, Denis Kudrjašov, ,Anetta Lukjanova, Sandra Marins, Daniel Niittymäki, Liisa Nurklik, Anna Ovtšinnikova, Jaakko Pennanen, Viljamaria Raittila, Ella Rahkonen, Paul Rannik, Kertu Rannula, Mahmood Salim, Kertu-Liisa Sarap, Marc Léger Sauvageot, Nora Schmelter, Kati Silo, Yiyang Sun, Hanna Vinter, Maria Wrang-Rasmussen
Curators: Merike Estna, Kristi Kongi, Kaisa Maasik, Päivi Takala, Salla Tykkä, Toni Vallasjoki, Laura Wesamaa

The exhibition is supported by the Estonian Embassy in Helsinki and Nordplus.

Permalink

“A chair, a door, a rose, a spoon”
EKA Gallery 27.10.–22.11.2026
Open Tue–Sat 12–6 pm Sun 12–4 pm, free entry
Opening: Thu, 29.10. at 6 pm
Curatorial tours: Fri 30.10. at 6.30 pm (in Estonian) and 7.15 pm (in English)

The group exhibition “A chair, a door, a rose, a spoon”, curated by Kati Saarits and Hannah Segerkrantz, stems from their shared interest in practices that move between craft, applied arts and design. Gathering works from artists, designers and makers based in the Baltics and Finland, the exhibition places contemporary pieces in relationships with selected objects from local museum collections.

Functional objects tend to need bodies around them. A chair expects weight, a door ought to be opened, a rose longs for a vase, a spoon needs a hand. These things have been made to be used, looked at, lived with, inherited, displayed, collected, owned. Their functions accumulate and recede. And sometimes use remains only as a memory of use, or as a possibility.

Decorative objects have historically existed to attract, to impress, to seduce, be adorned, touched and possessed. Their beauty has never been supplementary to function, sometimes beauty was the function. Such objects were made by hands that also thought of them as pictures. Objects that served a purpose and, at the same time, refused to be reduced to it.

The exhibition “A chair, a door, a rose, a spoon” begins somewhere inside these distinctions focusing on applied arts, as if application were a compromise rather than a form of thought. These are not contradictions to be resolved, they are how the objects argue their existence. Rather than approaching craft through heritage or technique alone, this exhibition brings together designers, artists and makers whose works exist in the overlap of these practices, carrying both use-value and decorative autonomy, and asking to be read on both terms simultaneously.

A chair is hung on the peg rail, a door is opened, roses are brought inside, a spoon is placed on the table.

Participating artists and designers: Anna Larionova, Aleš Rezler, Artek, Brit Pavelson, Bruno Tomberg Studio, Carlo Raymann, Carmen Kremm, Claudia Lepik, Darja Popolitova, Garbage Kids, Hannah Segerkrantz, Helena Keskküla, Heli Juuti, Helle Gans, Hertta Kiiski & Janne Punkari, Johanna Adojaan, Juss Heinsalu, Kaisa Sööt, Katahana, Kati Saarits, Katrin Kask, Kay Shek, Kirsikka Tuuli, Kärt Ojavee, Maarja Mäemets, Maile Grünberg, Mariam Mestvirishvili, Marite Kuus-Hill, Mona Sofia Tahk, Muusa Stuudio, Paul Flanders, Rait Lõhmus, Rita Vaali, Santeri Mortti, Tatu Laakso, Tea Tammelaan, Teresa RA, Veera Gontsugova, Viieline, Vilius Dringelis, Ville Aakula and Yrjö Kukkapuro (Artek 2nd Cycle)
Curators: Kati Saarits, Hannah Segerkrantz
Exhibition design: Kadri Villand
Technical support: Ats Kruusing, Asmus Soodla
Graphic design: Simon Janson
Exhibition team: Kaisa Maasik-Koplimets, Aleksander Metsamärt, Valve Saarma, Marily Simenson-Plasko, Andreas Vrettos, Hanna Õunapuu

Thanks to: Estonian Museum of Architecture, Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design, EKA Museum
The exhibition is supported by Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Embassy of Finland, Tallinn City and Sadolin Estonia.
Opening drinks from mirai™ and Põhjala Brewery.

Permalink

“Beyond the Veil”
EKA Billboard Gallery 24.10.–24.12.2026
Open 24/7, free admission
Opening: Friday, October 23 at 6 pm

Who is haunting the school walls, lurking beyond the veil? Hidden in the basement of the EKA library lies an archive of ghosts and restless spirits who are asking to be released. Using the archive as a starting point, the graphic design students have developed an exhibition for the EKA Billboard Gallery, which also became a publication and, finally, an exorcism. This, of course, meant that all working materials were haunted: everything was spooky.

Andrew Kuus-Hill, the curator of the exhibition, described the process: “We have enchanted 250 A3-sized prints, pasted them on the billboard, and with the phantoms by our side, performed an exorcism to set them free. Sorcerer hats will be provided on site.”

Supervisors: Andrew Kuus-Hill, Ethan Anthony Read
Workshop participants (Bachelor’s students of the Graphic Design department of the Estonian Academy of Arts): Saskia Algma, Helen Forsel, Art Kruus, Stella Maris Liiva, Deisi Anelle Poska, Anna Elisabeth Remmelg, Ann Aotäht Sarv, Ariana Sigin, Eva Ševtšenko
Graphic design: Andrew Kuus-Hill, Ethan Anthony Read

The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia and Tallinn City.
Opening drinks provided by Põhjala Brewery.

Permalink

Permalink

Group exhibition “Light Chimes at the Edge of Time” open in the large gallery of the Tartu Art House.

What if science fiction no longer imagines the future, but reveals a present we do not yet understand?

The exhibition brings together seven artists whose work engages with science fiction in one way or another and explores the possibilities of science fiction within the exhibition format, asking whether sci-fi has become a nostalgic image of futures that never came to pass, whether it remains a genre oriented towards and preoccupied with the future, or whether it has become something else entirely.

Since Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, modern science fiction – or simply sci-fi – has stimulated the human imagination by envisioning what does not yet exist. Philosophically, science fiction is one of the most sustained experiments of the past few centuries. It connects imagination with knowledge, speculation with materiality, and asks what the world might be like if we were to alter some of its underlying assumptions. It has produced images of other planets, technologies, societies and futures. In its classic conception, science fiction is located somewhere ahead of us: in a place where reality might theoretically arrive one day. But, increasingly, it seems that the future is no longer there, ahead of us; it may be a condition we already inhabit, already projected into our present.

“What happens when a system can no longer describe reality, yet continues to produce an endless stream of descriptions? It seems that contemporary science fiction occupies precisely this point of contact, where our descriptions meet reality, spill over into it, and reality continues on. In her Cyborg Manifesto, Donna Haraway wrote that the boundary between science fiction and social reality is merely an optical illusion. “Light Chimes at the Edge of Time” examines this boundary and its immediate surroundings as a place where something is taking shape, making itself visible, audible, perceptible, comprehensible or simply known,” the artists explain.

The exhibition has no single curator; its final form has emerged through a shared process of discussion and creative practice among the artists, in which the symbiosis between works creates opportunities for new worlds and new encounters.

Artists: Katrin Enni, Sandra Ernits, Marten Esko, Mihkel Ilus, Olev Kuma, Holger Loodus and Solveig Lill

Graphic design by: Tüpokompanii

Thanks: Alejandro Montes de Oca, Claudia Schnugg, Eesti kunstiakadeemia, Elena Pietrini, perekond Ernits, Hans Lillemets, Jan Schacher, Julius Thomas, Katariina Tamm, Margus Elizarov, Mihkel Raev, Mihkel Tomberg, RepliFate võrgustik, Silpa-Mary Johnson, Taavi Teevet, Tanel Paliale, Virginia Pasti

The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

Permalink

EKKM’s new exhibition explores the poetic and personal as a counterforce to political reality. 

On 9 October at 7 pm, the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM) will open the group exhibition We Have a Land of Words [1]. Making a long-distance call to Southwest Asia, the exhibition approaches a complex subject by moving from generalised media narratives and ideological frameworks to the stories and lived experiences of individuals. Curator Evelyn Raudsepp shaped the exhibition through video interviews with Palestinian curators, drawing on the observations, experiences and reflections that emerge through personal conversations.

The exhibition brings together works by several internationally acclaimed artists whose relationships to the region are inseparable from their artistic practices. In Mona Hatoum’s work, intimate correspondence with her mother reveals how political conflict permeates even the most private domestic spheres of everyday life. Larissa Sansour’s film, which shows her family gathered around the dinner table, demonstrates just how short the distance from soup to politics can be.

Writing, storytelling, singing, and cooking can become everyday practices of resistance, sustaining connections with a land torn apart. In the hypnotic video installation by Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, songs and dances carry intergenerational memory while offering ways of coping, both mentally and physically, with colonial violence. Jumana Manna’s quilted and embroidered flags weave together different forms of collective resistance, holding within it the Palestinian spirit of defiance.

Across the exhibition, words also bring lost places back into view. Forensic Architecture uses digital 3D modelling and architectural analysis to reconstruct a Palestinian historian’s home village, destroyed in 1948, from his memories and testimony. Dahaleez Collective’s sound work reimagines a street in Gaza through field recordings and local descriptions, tracing a place that has been transformed beyond recognition, both visually and sonically.

Stories from the Southwest Asia reach Estonia largely through mediated forms: conflicting news reports, statistics, and a relentless audiovisual stream of violence. The exhibition seeks to interrupt this distance by foregrounding human experience and creating possibilities for more direct forms of contact. Through the intimate act of shaping clay, a connection is forged between two artists separated by distance – one in Gaza, the other in Tallinn. Due to restrictions on the movement of both materials and people, Yasmeen Al Daya’s sculpture has been recreated in local clay by Keithy Kuuspu, in close collaboration with the artist.

New works by Estonian artists draw connections with their earlier encounters with the region. Laura Põld brings together experiences from artist residencies in Iran with discoveries from her family archive. Dénes Farkas presents photographs taken before he became an artist, including images of places in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories that are now inaccessible, alongside more recent works that have circulated internationally. The exhibition’s archival layer traces the fragmented history of knowledge and perceptions of Palestine in Estonia, asking what has shaped them at different times.

The exhibition design by artist Anu Vahtra works with the historical layers embedded in EKKM’s spaces, continuing, in the museum’s anniversary year, to foreground its raw and flexible backbone – a space willing to engage with society’s uncomfortable pressure points.

We Have a Land of Words is grounded in the idea that when political reality reaches an impasse, collective imagination can act as a poetic counterforce and an active process through which we can envision both the past and the future differently – rewriting historical narratives, preserving cultural memory, and means of imagining social relationships beyond the limits imposed by political reality. If we have the possibility to create a land out of words, what kind of world do we want to build together?

Opening night programme on 9 October

18:00 Exhibition opens
18:00–20:00 Music selected by the curator
19:00 Opening remarks and an introduction to the exhibition by the curator
20:00–22:00 DJ Shah Rud b2b Dharma Doom (Shelter)

Artists: Basel Abbas ja Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Dahaleez Collective, Dénes Farkas, Forensic Architecture, Jumana Manna, Keithy Kuuspu, Larissa Sansour, Laura Põld, Mona Hatoum, Yasmeen Al Daya

Curator: Evelyn Raudsepp

Consultants: Ahmad Alaqra, Amer Shomaly, Lara Khaldi, Noor Abed, Yasmin Huleileh, Yazan Khalili,

Exhibition designer: Anu Vahtra

Public programme curators: Anita Kodanik, Sanna Kartau and Evelyn Raudsepp
Curated book corner in collaboration with the Estonian Academy of Arts Library.
Special thanks to: Ahmad Hussein, Aline Khoury, Daniel Vaarik, Linda Kaljundi, Maria-Kristiina Soomre, OTO Museum, Paul O’Neill, Meelis Oidsalu, Sif Lindblad and others
Supported by: Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Ministry of Culture, City of Tallinn

[1] The title is taken from the Estonian-language poetry collection of the same name by Mahmoud Darwish, one of Palestine’s best-known poets. It is also the only book by a Palestinian author published in Estonian. Compiled and translated by Amar Annus; published by the Estonian Language Foundation / EKSA, 2011.

Permalink

Getriin Kotsar & Maria Helena Seppik
“home.house.hardcore.”
EKA Gallery 16.–18.10.2026

The project “home.house.hardcore.” focuses on the possibility of creating a sanctuary, driven by a lack of security, stability, and opportunity. The young artists are interested in how to create a space for a few days that resembles a home in the best sense of the word—a place that is safe and warm. The entire work stems from the artists’ interest in fragility, an unstable world, and crumbling materiality. Together with visitors, both the performance and the installation seek ways to maintain a sense of hope and security, even in the face of challenging circumstances.

The performance lasts for 12 hours, beginning at 7 pm on October 16 and concluding at 7 am on the morning of October 17. The installation is open to the public during EKA Gallery’s regular opening hours on October 17 and 18 (Sat 12–6 pm and Sun 12–4 pm).

Performance artists: Getriin Kotsar, Maria Helena Seppik
Sound design: Kaur Tõra
Graphic design: Simon Janson
Technical support: Ats Kruusing
The project is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Tallinn City, Uuskasutuskeskus and Sadolin Estonia.
Drinks served during the performance from mirai™ and Põhjala Brewery.

Permalink

Permalink