Exhibitions

Tõnis Jürgens „Dreaming of Babylon“ / „Paabeli ulmad“

Tartu Kunstimuuseum / Tartu Art Museum

18.03.2023–14.05.2023

The main focus of the exhibition is the digital measurement of sleep, which has gained popularity in recent years. Tracking the habits of one’s everyday life is offered to individual users by an increasing number of devices: smartwatches, -bands, -rings, -speakers, -mats, apps etc. These devices track users even when they are sleeping, collecting a steady stream of data about their habits and cycles of sleep.

The measuring of sleep turns a welcome spotlight on the importance of healthy sleep habits. However, the data collected through these measurements are resources and commodities which end up in the data centres of the smart device manufacturers and which can then be resold as data or market information. Therefore, by tracking your sleep habits and interpreting the collected data, you are also working while you are sleeping.

It seems that sleep, which previously seemed to be the last mysterious safe haven where capitalism couldn’t reach, has quietly started becoming part of the machinations of the surveillance society. Through measuring sleep, dreams have turned into side-products in the production process, like the noise surrounding a radio signal or the sediment in a bottle of juice.

At the exhibition Dreaming of Babylon, Tõnis Jürgens follows the afterlives of the data collected by the surveillance society, as well as dreams that have been written down by dreamers. At the centre of the display is a staged bedroom filled with traces of somebody’s life. In the room, a film is projected – scenes of server racks towering over uninhabited landscapes – which is accompanied by a shifting narrative of the descriptions of dreams.

The exhibition is part of the Tartu Art Museum exhibition series Young Tartu.

Tõnis Jürgens (b 1989) is a film projectionist, a writer and an emptiness aficionado. He has a bachelor’s degree in culture studies from Tallinn University and a master’s degree from the Department of New Media at the Estonian Academy of Arts, including an additional year as an exchange student at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (UMPRUM). The exhibition is a continuation of Jürgens’s creative research at the Doctoral School of the Estonian Academy of Arts.

An evening with noise music, nostalgic irony and cake.

Nele Tiidelepp’s play “When we reached the end of the sentence, we forgot where it started” is performed again.

A fluid collective consisting mainly of performers, artists, musicians and art workers with a background in EKA, Riin Maide, Gregor Kulla, Henri Särekanno, Ekke Janisk, Andreas Kübar, Ats Kruusing, Oliver Issak, Raul Markus Vaiksoo and Leon Allik, are Tiidelepp’s companions on this journey to the end of the sentence, where the predominant activity is the attempt to forget the past and the predominant mood is anxiety, chaos, alienation and sincerity due to its impossibility.

Director: Nele Tiidelepp

Performers: Nele Tiidelepp, Riin Maide, Henri Särekanno, Gregor Kulla, Ats Kruusing, Andreas Kübar, Ekke Janisk

Artist: Riin Maide

Dramaturgical support: Oliver Issak

Illuminator: Leon Allik

Choreography: Raul Markus Vaiksoo

Project manager: Kaie Küünal

Co-production: Kanuti Gildi SAAL, Nele Tiidelepp

Support: the Cultural Endowment of Estonia 

The performances will take place on March 29, 30 and April 1 at 7:30 p.m. in the Nele Tiidelepp’s play “When we reached the end of the sentence, we forgot where it started”.

The number of places is limited – grab your ticket now!

The first thought I had when I walked into the hall was that I felt like I was walking into someone else’s class night. It’s a certain pseudo-nostalgic feeling associated with the experience of a class night. An experience that has been somewhere before and you long for it. – Karin Allik, Kultuur ERR

Some scenes also seemed almost like a quote from something earlier and more distant, as if the performers, despite the prism of irony, were nostalgic for some distant, indirectly experienced times, when neon was in fashion and Janika Sillamaa sang about hope in a bright voice – Brigitta Davidjants, Sirp

Come and visit the exhibition Introduction to Estonian Design! Perhaps you can recognize some familiar objects? Tell us more about it!

The Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design (ETDM) invites you to contribute to the upcoming installation featuring visitors’ photographs and stories of design objects that can be found at homes and in the museum! Other objects that relate to the exhibition are also welcome.

Public programme and installation Do you have this at home? explores the wider context of design objects. We aim to raise awareness on local histories and form a more personal connection with the surrounding material culture. By showcasing how household items can become museum objects over time, the installation supports the further understanding of the museum’s collection and seeks to facilitate a conversation where varying voices can be heard.

Show us what you have:

1. Look around your home! Find out if there is/are some design object(s)
2. Take a picture of it
3. Think of any personal memories related to this object – traditions, rituals, how it became yours, anything nostalgic or very pragmatic. You can also consult and gather stories from your friends and family. Write down the story
4. Send us the photo and story via email to publik@etdm.ee or bring it to the museum reception at Lai 17, Tallinn

Selected contributions will be included in an installation in the permanent exhibition.

The public programme and installation is created in collaboration between the Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design (ETDM) and the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA), The Institute of Art History and Visual Culture.

Do you have this at home? is envisioned by students Ksenia Kovalenko, Maivi Kärginen-Kivi, Lilla Lukács, Paula Oberndorfer, and Johanna-Elisabeth Tärno.

Special thanks to Agnes Aljas, Rebecca Duclos, Hanna-Liis Kont, and Sandra Nuut.

Graphic design by Ott Kagovere

Exhibition design by Ulla Alla

The Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design (ETDM) has been collecting and contextualizing design for the past twenty years. There are about 18 000 pieces in the museum’s collection, which are the base to organize exhibitions, public and educational programmes.

Entropy Gauntlet
Zody Burke, Taylor “Tex” Tehan, Joonas Timmi, Lauri Raus April 6 – April 28, 2023
Opening: April 6, 6pm–9pm

“There is nothing more mysterious than a TV set left on in an empty room … Suddenly the TV reveals itself for what it really is: a video of another world, ultimately addressed to no one at all, delivering its images indifferently, indifferent to its own messages. You can easily imagine it still functioning after humanity has disappeared.”

— Jean Baudrillard, America

Entropy Gauntlet invites you to pass a threshold into a transmutation of space. Inspired by wide-eyed summer night visits to amusement parks and roadside motels, laden with the nostalgia of childhood & playing with the expectations generated by the psychogeography of such spaces, the exhibition leads viewers to contemplate the tension between fantasies of the world we’ve inherited versus the reality of a warming planet.

Solastalgia, a concept which describes a form of emotional or existential distress caused by environmental change, presents itself materially through an amalgam of works and artifacts set inside a narrative. Within the Entropy Gauntlet is a contemporary apologue; using architecture as archetype, exploring the porousness of post-western notions of national identity and its haunted histories. Here, utopia and dystopia become uneven categories in the realm of the anthropocene.

In the tradition of transformative environmental-architectural works such as Gregor Schneider’s “Totes Haus u r” and Jonah Freeman’s “Hello Meth Lab in the Sun”, and hearkening to Robert Ashley’s operatic compositions of late capitalist melancholia, the Entropy Gauntlet manifests as a linear series of archaeological sites undergoing perpetual excavation. It is a narrative of motion and placelessness tropifying the notion that invisible, emotional environs can be injected into the visible sphere to create a sense of longing, dread, and even abject horror.

A note from the artists…

The roadside motel is a ubiquitous feature upon the sprawling face of the continental USA, but it is entirely absent in Estonia. It is taken for granted as a place where small tragedies may or may not occur. It is a location for repressed emotions to manifest due to its invisible status, despite its ubiquity in the flyover states. Within the Entropy Gauntlet, our aim is to engage with the surreality that permeates the line where memory and history interact, in an unexpected location in Tallinn; creating a hauntological simulacrum of a space that exists between destinations. The poetic transmutations of culture that occur when countries on opposite sides of the globe mirror and refract one another are acutely fertile terrain for our work.

The fact that the USA exists partially as a fantasy informed by media is intrinsic to our concept. Two out of four of us are American; despite this, the two of us have experienced our home country in ways that run contradictory to the America that exists in the imagination of the cultural status quo. The other two of us are Estonian and have spent a considerable amount of time formulating fantasies about America & weighing these fantasies against facts. To honestly engage with the USA is to deal with omnipresent shadows that resist truth & dominate the country’s emotional cartography, and with an endless deluge of popular fantasies that provide alternative images to the USA that exists.

Artist Bios:

With an eye towards the complicated nature of inherent and enforced structures, American multidisciplinary artist Zody Burke criticizes the absurdity of late capitalism and the mythologies and archetypes it generates, while leaving a liminal space for larger ways of being together.
Working with sculpture, illustration, sound, and other media, Burke has sought to establish that societal concepts of identity, symbolism, brutality and hierarchy are as tenuous as we see to craft them, and yet they paradoxically shape practically every facet of our lives.

Taylor “Tex” Tehan is an M.A. Graphic Design student from the United States and an interdisciplinary practitioner. Working with textiles, sound, metal, wood and film, his work is influenced by the landscape, nostalgia, speculative futures, mythology and romanticism of the American West. Previously working in the fashion industry, Tehan has worked as a designer for various brands, including a recent traineeship on the Menswear Design Team at Louis Vuitton in Paris. His interests meet at the cross section of fashion, music, contemporary art, film and graphic design, with a strong emphasis on experiential-environmental themes.

Joonas Timmi is an Estonian artist & designer who explores the contemporary identity of craftsmanship by combining traditional woodworking techniques with VR-modeling, 3D-printing and CNC-milling. In his work, he expresses the relations between functionality and sentimentality in objects using furniture as the main medium. Each piece aims to be a somewhat functional artifact with an emphasis on biomorphic form with anthropomorphic charisma. A recent work, “Traction” chair, was exhibited in the exhibition “Present Yet-to-Be” (Tallinn, Hobusepea gallery) in January 2022. The installation combined meandering forms of plywood with textile to create throne-like structure, inspired by the idea of alternate realities.

Lauri Raus is an Estonian songwriter & guitarist, most notable for his work in contemporary country/shoegaze ensemble Holy Motors. Through his work, he engages with western musical tropes from a distance, transfiguring his own interpretation of Americana into something subtly different and altogether unique. His band is signed to New York-based indie label Wharf Cat which has enabled him to tour the USA, allowing him to rupture, expand, and transform his relationship with the musical tradition he uses as a foundation for his art. He studies anthropology at Tallinn University.

On Thursday, 16th of March at 19:00, EKA Graphic Design and Product Design second year students open their collective exhibition ‘Randomness, where?’ at ARS Art Factory Studio 53/98.

The exhibition showcases works from more than 20 authors, who explore the theme of randomness and its many forms of expression through personal observations, discovering the beauty of the unpredictable. Can anything be truly random? Is unintended behaviour a human condition differentiating us from algorithms, and what kind of patterns arise when observing unexpected events over time.

Randomness is explored through a vast variety of mediums within the exhibition – such as installation, sculpture, photography, interactive pieces, light installation, sound etc.

The exhibition is open for only three days: 17th until 19th of March, from 13.00-18.00.

Artists: Anette Jaaniso, Beata Batejev, Diana Tammets, Hannah Eliel Allmann, Ilia Rotar, Ines Maria Uudam, Kaisa Uik, Karl-Alder Kuivjõgi, Karl-Egert Kartau, Karolin Eks, Kasper Korsen, Katrin Selin, Ljubov Terukova, Mariann Hendrikson, Marie Soosaar, Mark Uustalu, Markus Laanisto, Nelli Viisimaa, Oliver Udeküll, Pille-Riin Valk, Rasmus Einman, Risto Tepper, Robin Raspel, Ronald Trei

Graphic Design: Nelli Viisimaa, Diana Tammets

Mentor: Sten Saarits

Supported by Estonian Academy of Arts, Estonian Artists’ Association

Follow events at ARS Art Factory: www.arsfactory.ee
(ARS Art Factory is located at Pärnu mnt 154, Tallinn)

Join us at Uus Rada Galerii on Tuesday March 7 at 7 p.m. for our Video Works Screening night. 

This public screening features video works made by 26 EKA students/artists including Lauri Lest, Rebeca Parbus, Laura De Jaeger, Mirjam Varik, Daria Kylm, Viktoria Martjanova, Łukasz Rygał, Andrea Gudiño, Paulina Belik, Noah Emanuel Morrison, Eva Eller, Sigrid Barranco Ballonga, Sarah Noonan, Jim Wolff, Inessa Saarits, Alina Birjuk, Raahel Rüütel, Kristel Zimmer, Kelli Tõnurist, Kirke Selirand, Lara Žagar, Inka Jerkku, Siew Ching Ang and Josefine Flora Green.

The videos were submitted in a non-juried open call for short experimental videos. There is an incredible variety of videos to come and see. We are excited to share them with everyone!

Free admission.
Soup will be available and you can bring your own drinks.

Uus Rada Galerii is located at Raja 11a.

For more details or questions email at uusrada@artun.ee or via
Instagram @uusrada 

Maria Izabella Lehtsaar & Sarah Nõmm open their duo exhibition Beauty in the Belly of the Beast in Draakon gallery at 18:00 on Wednesday, March 8th, 2023. Curators of the exhibition are Anita Kodanik and Brigit Arop. Exhibition will be open until April 1st, 2023.

With their duo exhibition Beauty in the Belly of the Beast, Maria Izabella Lehtsaar & Sarah Nõmm focus on their shared interests towards intimacy, sexual self-expression and various representations of love and violence between people. Current exhibition is based on the concept of bedroom as a place where one can rest, dream, feel pleasure and fear. It is also a place where one reads texts that shape us as human beings and creators and the place where meetings for this collaboration have taken place. The “bedroom activities” form a socially controversial subject. This place is intimate and reveals the nuances about us that are private and make us vulnerable. It is something that entirely belongs to oneself and at the same time is completely shared with the dearest ones. And yet, not all bedrooms are safe – besides softness, there could also be violence experienced under the roof of love.

The artworks at the present duo exhibition have been inspired by the contradictions related to the intimacy of a bedroom where the expressive means of tenderness and harshness are intertwined. For instance, Nõmm’s artwork “Little Switch” refers to a whip as an object with the purpose of hurting, that can be read in several ways. On one hand, it is an object of power and violence that is used for punishing disobedient bodies; on the other hand, the whip has its place in sexual practices where harshness, care and pleasure are combined. Lehtsaar’s new linocut works “Pillow Princess” and “Unknown Pleasures” continue expanding the artist’s visual queer vocabulary. “Loveless V” is their final addition to the series on the subject of boxing as self-defense and self-love, while also referring to their attempt to challenge gendered stigmatization of extreme or violent sports. Nõmm’s installation “Untie My Ribbons” is inspired by non-normative romantic relationships that won’t classify under the seemingly obligatory relationship form of monogamy. Through the cuddly weapons from the series “The Softest Touch” and the pictures completed by manual typesetting titled “Queer Scissors I II III”, Lehtsaar observes the world of signs related to lesbianism while in some cases using it for self-empowerment and in other cases ironically repeating uniform stereotypes to absurdity.

The stories of the interwoven destinies of a beauty and a beast are as old as our civilization. These usually begin with the imprisoned princess and end with marrying the prince who has killed the dragon. Sometimes these stories have also been told from the point of view of a princess with a higher agency, revealing for instance that the prince might be even more monstrous than the dragon, or that the princess could save herself on her own, or will choose another partner in life. Yet these stories won’t tell us anything about the daily life of the new couple nor the fact that there are beasts sleeping underneath their bed. Beauty in the Belly of the Beast attempts to offer more diverse narratives about intimacy and to enrich the common ground for mutual understanding while emphasizing the importance of safe experiences to people’s welfare.

Maria Izabella Lehtsaar (they/them) is an artist based in Tallinn who combines textiles, graphics, drawing, installation and text in their work. Their works deal mainly with the themes of queer experience and mental health, often playing on the fragile border between reality and fantasy. Lehtsaar graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts with a bachelor’s degree in Graphic Art and is currently studying in the Contemporary Art MA programme. In 2021, they were awarded the Edmund Valtman scholarship and in 2022, they were nominated for the AkzoNobel Art Prize with Sarah Nõmm.

Sarah Nõmm (she/her) is an artist based in Tallinn who works primarily with sculpture, installation, video and performance. Her work deals with the female body and the spaces surrounding it. Nõmm’s works are often based on personal experiences and look at themes of the body through popular beliefs, myths, taboos and everyday rituals. She has a bachelor’s degree in Sculpture and Installation from the Estonian Academy of Arts. In 2021, she was awarded the Young Sculptor Prize, in 2022 she was nominated for the AkzoNobel Art Prize with Maria Izabella Lehtsaar, and won the Eduard Wiiralt scholarship.

Anita Kodanik (she/her) is an Estonian-Ukrainian freelance art worker based in Tallinn. Her research and curatorial practice focus on the visual cultural expressions of collective and personal identity politics. Kodanik graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts with a bachelor’s degree in art history and is currently doing her master’s in curatorial studies. Her recent curatorial projects include exhibitions Imageries in Blanks (2022) at Maardu Decennial and Exercises for Dreamkeeping (2022) organised together with roam Berlin residency program.

Brigit Arop (she/her) is a freelance art worker based in Tallinn with a background in semiotics, who mainly curates and writes. She is interested in artistic practices that use poetry, material-sensitive approaches and humour to shift stale values. Arop has a bachelor’s degree in Semiotics and Cultural Theory from the University of Tartu, and is currently studying for a master’s degree in Curatorial Studies at the Estonian Academy of Arts. Her last curatorial project was the group exhibition Greetings, and Whatever Customarily Restores a Bond About to Break in Kogo Gallery, Tartu (2023).

Graphic design: Kertu Klementi

Supporters: Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Student Council of Estonian Academy of Arts
Special gratitude goes to: Anton Serdjukov, Karl-Christoph Rebane, department of graphic art at the Estonian Academy of Arts, Eda Urmet, Kristi Kongi, Marge Monko.

Exhibitions in Draakon gallery are supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Ministry of Culture and Liviko Ltd.

The Installation and Sculpture Department of the Estonian Academy of Arts presents: Young Sculptor Award Exhibition 2023

On March 1, the Young Sculptor Prize Exhibition (NSPN) taking place in the ARS Project Room includes the following nominees:

Josefine Green, Sophia Hallmann, Mara Kirchberg, Lisethe Maas, Rose Magee, Eke Ao Nettan, Sarah Noonan, Paula Oberndorfer, Didi van der Putte, Kertu-Liisa Sarap, Asmus Soodla, Sonja Sutt, Kail Timusk and Mattias Veller.

The purpose of the Young Sculptor Award and the accompanying exhibition is to highlight and recognize the professional activities of young artists working in sculpture and installation. On display is a selection of works completed by EKA students over the past year, from which a jury consisting of experts in turn selects the best. The winners will be announced at the opening of the exhibition on March 1.

The main organizer of the award exhibition, Taavi Talve: “At the award exhibition, you can see a wide range of different artistic practices, from interventions in the exhibition space that are almost imperceptible at first glance, to works that invite the viewer to actively interact with themselves. It must be recognized that making a choice from among works of a steadily increasing level is no longer an easy task, and we can only hope that all the remaining projects will also find their way to their audience in one way or another”.

Today, NSPN has become one of the most famous Estonian new art awards. Attention and victory at the exhibition have become a springboard to the central field of Estonian art.

The winner of 2022, Junny Yeung, Master of Contemporary Art at EKA, was also recognized with the EKA Young Artist Master’s Award in 2022. The NSPN 2021 laureate Sarah Nõmm received an important recognition in the form of the 2022 Eduard Wiiralt scholarship. Hanna Piksarv, Sten Saarits, Anna Mari Liivrand, Johannes Valdma, Rosa Violetta Grötsch, Johannes Luik, Siim Elmers and Sarah Nõmm have previously received the Young Sculptor Award.

The Video Works Screening is a new programming initiative to bridge student artists from all EKA departments and create community-based social events. 

We value experimentation, works-in-progress, finished work, documentary, and animations. Any ideas that encourage new techniques and perspectives are welcomed. 

We are accepting films that are under 5 minutes in duration*. Deadline for submissions is no later than Wednesday, February 22. Submissions will not be juried and we hope all videos that fit within the submission guidelines will be screened. Screening time will be given to the earliest received submissions so please apply as soon as possible!

Link to application Open Call – Video Works Screening: Uus Rada Open Call Application: Video Works Screening

You can email us for more details or questions at uusrada@artun.ee or on our instagram @uusrada