Exhibitions

04.07-26.07 @ Keskpuur

The opening of LMEO artist duo’s first international exhibition will take place on July 4 at 13:00.
Drinks for the opening will be provided by Tuletorn & Vaat.

Keskpuur is pleased to announce Everything is Just Something to Get Through – the first international exhibition by the artist duo LMEO. Originally from Montréal and now based in Tallinn, LMEO brings together their individual practices through a collaborative approach rooted in sculpture, installation, and performance.

As temporary residents in Estonia, the artists have developed the exhibition through the observant gaze of newcomers. This exhibition challenges concepts of spectatorship and its relation to urban systems, drawing attention to the ways public infrastructures can function [or can be understood] as choreography.

The exhibition evokes a feeling of displacement or loneliness that blends into the anonymity of public space. Through flickering lights, industrial assemblages, and images of the mundane, Everything is Just Something to Get Through reflects on the banal structures that shape contemporary life and reimagines them as theatrical settings. LMEO invites viewers to encounter these environments with the heightened awareness of a visitor or outsider, while considering how spiritual presence and emotional connection might inhabit ordinary spaces as a means of communicating across distance and coping with grief and loss.

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Lili Maud Dobell and Éric-Olivier Thériault have worked collaboratively since October 2022, after meeting while completing their BFAs at NSCAD University. After establishing an alternative gallery space in Halifax, Canada, the artists moved to Estonia to pursue graduate studies at the Estonian Academy of Arts in the Contemporary Art MA programme. The pair uses collaboration as a meeting ground for a shared artistic vision, resisting singular authorship.

The acronym LMEO stands for “Laughing My Ears Off” while also referencing the initials of their first names.

Both artists specialize in sculptural practices that invite or consider bodily interaction with materials. Their collaborative practice speaks in a tone they describe as “pathetic poetry”. Through their durational works, they coined the term Proof of Performance to describe the sculptural act of making through being.

Central to the pair’s joint practice is the gathering and assemblage of found objects, reflecting a commitment to a sustainable artistic language that considers the relevance and utility of the readymade within a context of climate and socio-political crisis. As a result, the seemingly mundane spaces where the reflection and the non-doing aspects of a sculptural practice are activated become the subject for the artwork itself.

Lili Maud and Éric-Olivier are currently developing Cycles, a performance piece that will be shown at the 61st Venice Biennale under the pavilion umbrella of Merike Estna’s House of Leaking Sky.

Lisette Lepik’s solo exhibition Flow State will open on 7th of July at 18:00 at Artovert Gallery.

7.07 – 7.08.2026

Tue – Sat 12:00 – 18:00, Sun – Mon closed
Exhibition opening on Tuesday 7th of July at 18:00.

Artrovert Gallery, Ristiku tn 10, 10612 Tallinn

Lisette Lepik’s solo exhibition Flow State focuses on the dialogue between painting as a non-linear medium and dance as a medium unfolding in time. The exhibition is guided by the question: how can movement that disappears in time be transformed into an image, and can painting convey the experience of movement?

Painting has traditionally been understood as a static, two-dimensional medium. Dance, by contrast, emerges through movement and duration. While the two mediums engage with time in different ways, both are shaped by gesture and bodily action. Movement in dance is experienced through time, whereas painting appears to suspend time, preserving traces of a process that has already passed.

Within both processes, there are moments when attention becomes fully absorbed in the act itself. As movement unfolds, awareness of the surrounding environment fades and the distinction between intention and action becomes less pronounced. Flow State draws on this shared condition, exploring how the fleeting presence of movement can leave traces that persist beyond the moment of its occurrence.

Flow State extends beyond the boundaries of painting into a carefully constructed spatial environment. Sound, light, and exhibition architecture become active participants in the work, gradually dissolving distinctions between image and atmosphere, observation and immersion. Together, these elements create a space where the exhibition’s central questions are experienced as much through the viewer’s movement and perception as through the paintings themselves.

Lisette Lepik (b. 1999, Tallinn, EE) is an artist working primarily with painting and installation. Her practice examines the body as a site where intimacy, memory, family structures, and social roles intersect. 

Lepik is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Contemporary Art at the Estonian Academy of Arts, where she completed a Bachelor’s degree in Painting in 2022, and studied installation and sculpture at the Iceland University of the Arts in 2019. She has exhibited in Estonia, Iceland, Austria, and Lithuania, including duo exhibitions with Brenda Purtsak at Tartu Art House and Hobusepea Gallery (2024), and a collaborative exhibition with Kristina Kuzemko at Club Virgin, a strip club in Tallinn (2025). Her most recent solo exhibition took place at Haapsalu City Gallery (2025). She received the Estonian Academy of Arts’ “Õpi ja sära” scholarship in 2024 and the Helju Rossmann Scholarship in 2025.

Open: 7.07 – 7.08.2026

Tue – Sat 12:00 – 18:00, Sun – Mon closed

Artrovert Gallery, Ristiku tn 10, 10612 Tallinn

Curator: Nora Schmelter

Sound: Gregor Sirendi

Graphic Design: Villem Sarapuu

Technical Support: Siim Raie, Nora Schmelter, Mats Johan Soosaar

Special Thanks: Artrovert Gallery, Estonian Cultural Endowment, Estonian Academy of Arts Department of New Media, Punch Club, Bob Bicknell-Knight, Gerda Hansen, Mats Johan Soosaar

Sonya Isupova
“Water Usually in the Shape of a River. Hydroelectric Imaginaries of the Southern Ukrainian Landscape”
EKA Gallery 4.07.–16.08.2026 (NB! Closed during 20.07.–2.08.)
Open Tue–Sat 12–6 pm Sun 12–4 pm
Opening: Friday, July 3 at 6 pm

“Water Usually in the Shape of a River” is the first solo exhibition by Ukrainian artist and researcher Sonya Isupova. The exhibition explores Soviet infrastructural projects and their modes of representation, focusing on the hydroelectric dams built along the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine, particularly the Kakhovka and Dnipro hydroelectric stations. Through film and archival research, Isupova examines how these projects reshaped both landscape and collective memory.

The exhibition forms part of her doctoral research on the effects of colonial infrastructure on the landscape. She approaches Soviet films about infrastructure as “imaginary maps” that helped construct a unified Soviet space while simultaneously preserving visual records of territories before their transformation. Through these films, it becomes possible to trace the beginnings of ruination and reconstruct fragmented memories of landscapes submerged beneath the man-made seas of the Kakhovka and Dnipro reservoirs.

Positioned between monumentality and utility, Soviet hydroelectric projects generated a distinct visual language that presented nature as transformed by political power. Through archival artefacts and speculative reconstruction, the exhibition revisits these submerged landscapes and the histories embedded within them.

Graphic design: Simon Janson
Technical support: Ats Kruusing
The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia and Sadolin Estonia.
Opening drinks from mirai™.

Ronja Siitonen, Maria Wrang-Rasmussen, Martina Zito
“Charge, Jaw, Babble, Faucet”
EKA Gallery 4.07.–16.08.2026 (NB! Closed during 20.07.–2.08.)
Open Tue–Sat 12–6 pm Sun 12–4 pm
Opening: Friday, July 3 at 6 pm

The exhibition “Charge, Jaw, Babble, Faucet” expands through the magical, gray areas of active incoherence, wielding gibberish as both shield and tool to explore alternative logics of language. Here, communication extends beyond words into expanded forms and hidden meanings. Gibberish, as a private space of understanding, offers a playground for hide-and-seek between language and body, humour and mystery.

Working across video, installation, sculpture, and jelly painting, the exhibition brings together artworks by Ronja Siitonen, Maria Wrang-Rasmussen, and Martina Zito. Here, modern-day spells take shape as rhythmical languages in translation. Alchemical transformations simmer as teeth are scratched and paws wait patiently; skin wrinkles and stretches into a sweet tension; the trapeze pendulum hangs poised, ready for a push.

Graphic design: Simon Janson
Technical support: Ats Kruusing
The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia and Sadolin Estonia.
Opening drinks from mirai™.

On Friday, June 19th at 6:00 PM, the group exhibition “No matter what, matters” will open at the Uus Rada Gallery. The exhibition will remain open until June 28th.

The exhibition is open daily from June 20th to June 28th from 12:00 PM to 6:00 PM.

The group exhibition “No matter what, matters” explores the Anthropocene through a pagan and posthumanist perspective, offering alternative ways of understanding knowledge and experience. The exhibition places other agents alongside humans—materials, technological systems, virtual characters, and other non-human entities—that shape our world just as actively as we do. By remaining in constant relation with these actors, it arrives at a perspective being free from hierarchies, opening up new possibilities for perceiving information and inviting reflection on the diverse forms of identity, knowledge, and coexistence.

The exhibition brings together Estonian and international artists whose practice encompasses sculpture, installation, video and painting. Exploring the realities of modern landscapes, pre-apocalyptic future, power structures, self-exploration and heritage and relationality, artists approach in different ways the questions of consequences of interaction, ontology through material and negotiations with one another through posthuman and pagan lenses.

Participating artists: Éric-Olivier Thériault, Lili Maud Dobell, Yuko Kinouchi, Bob Bicknell-Knight, Ats Anton Varustin, Piia Bianka Pere and Daniil Musesovs.
The exhibition is curated by Daniil Musesovs.
Graphic design – Georg Ander Sild.

The exhibition is supported by Uus Rada Gallery, Estonian Academy of Arts, Estonian Cultural Endowment.

On 18 June at 6:30 PM, the contemporary artist Riina Varol will open her solo exhibition Overstream at the Draakon Gallery, dealing with the creative process as the formation of life.
The exhibition addresses questions of biological and non-biological self-realisation, comparing them with natural and creative processes.

The display stems from a nine-month-long pilgrimage; the space itself serving as an environment that activates perceptions, emotions and bodily experiences. The audience is presented with newly completed invisible images, small sculptures and spatial photo collages that, through their cavities and incisions, open reality as a layered experience. The exhibition space is designed as a playful and interactive sanctuary, accompanied by Helen Västrik’s atmospheric soundscape.

The rhythms of nature and creative practices that help to relate to uncertainty and existential questions play an important role in Varol’s work. In her practice, identity is seen as a fluctuating phenomenon that is formed through constant interaction with the surrounding environment. This idea is further enhanced by the materials and working methods used by the artist: plaster, layers, playing with stones, blind stamping and incision techniques.

According to Johan Huizinga, artworks belong to the sacred sphere, where play and holiness are united through rituals. In contemporary art, the esoteric dimension often reveals itself through symbols and attunement. The recurring toe motifs in Varol’s work symbolise grounding and gratitude for the Earth that carries and nourishes us. By placing them in nature and symbolically meaningful places, they might one day become archaeological finds, leading to personal mythologies. In the exhibition, the motif of the toe becomes the footprint of human experience: a sign of touch, presence and commitment.

RV: “For me, one of the main principles and qualities of creation is that I do my best to create environments which allow nature to allow ones nature to reveal in its entirety. Tactile work with materials is my way of awakening the body and the inner compass. That which seeks to eminate knows me better than i know them.”

Riina Varol is an artist and photographer based in Estonia. In her creative practice, she focuses on questions of sensorial perception and the functions of the subconscious, as well as animism and oriental philosophy. Varol’s body of work encompasses a variety of media, including site-specific multimedia installations, photography, graphics, ceramics, video, sound, tactility and smell. She studied photography at the Pallas University of Applied Sciences and the Naples Academy of Fine Arts. Varol is a member of the Estonian Artists’ Association and the Tartu Artists’ Union. She has participated in exhibitions in Estonia, Finland, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Lithuania, Ukraine and Australia. Since 2017, Varol has been a guest lecturer at the Estonian Academy of Arts and, since 2022, also at the Pallas University of Applied Sciences.

Location: Draakon Gallery, Pikk Street 18, Tallinn
Open to visitors: 19.06.–19.07.2026, Wed, Fri–Sun 12:00–18:00, Thu 12:00–19:00

Curator: Liisi Kõuhkna
Graphic design: Helmi Arrak
Sound design: Helen Västrik
Exhibition installation: Hans-Otto Ojaste
Special thanks: Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Artists’ Association, Draakon Gallery, Mari Volens, Gunnar Kalmet, Valerio Sarnataro, Helen Tago, Caroliine Pajusaar, Lauri Kilusk, Anne Eelmere, Jaan August Viirand, Hedvig and Ian, Hubert and Hilda, Christin Taul, mother, Craftrag, Punchclub, Nudist Drinks

On 18 June at 17:00, the exhibition “Tosin” opens on the ground floor of Draakon Gallery. The exhibition brings together a selection of master’s projects completed in the glass workshop of the Estonian Academy of Arts over the past twelve years. The exhibition is open from 18 June to 19 July.

The point of departure for the exhibition is the history of glass education in Estonia. The archive collection of the Tallinn School of Arts and Crafts holds a 1936 protocol of the school council, which refers to the establishment of the crystal and glass-cutting department by a decision of the Minister of Social Affairs. This may be understood as one of the first important milestones in Estonian glass education. “Tosin” looks back at this historical point of origin from a contemporary perspective, bringing together EKA master’s projects in which glass is the primary material.

The exhibition does not present a chronological overview. Instead, it focuses on a selection of master’s projects completed during the past twelve years and considers glass as a contemporary artistic medium moving between technical skill, spatial thinking, embodied experience and conceptual research.

“Tosin” brings together master’s projects whose physical realisation is connected to the technical possibilities and know-how of the EKA glass workshop. Glass connects the authors, workshop-based knowledge, historical continuity and personal creative processes.

At the centre of the exhibition is the question: what has glass enabled EKA master’s students to explore? The selected works use glass to open questions related to the body, memory, space, working process, industrial heritage, psychological self-reflection, digital identity, material agency, and the borderlands of art and design. In the exhibition, glass may appear as a technical challenge, an embodied partner, a reflective surface, a spatial installation, an image of a psychological state, a carrier of material memory, or a trigger for the creative process.

“Tosin” brings master’s projects that have since moved into artists’ studios or private collections back into public view, creating a new dialogue between them.

The participating artists are Iohan Figueroa, Andra Jõgis, Niina-Anneli Kaarnamo, Elle Lepik, Rait Lõhmus, Maris Maasikas-Korts, Alyona Movko-Mägi and Kristiina Oppi.

Acknowledgements: Estonian Glass Artists’ Union, Estonian Academy of Arts, Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Draakon Gallery

Exhibition: Tosin  

Participating artists: Iohan Figueroa, Andra Jõgis, Niina-Anneli Kaarnamo, Elle Lepik, Rait Lõhmus, Maris Maasikas-Korts, Alyona Movko-Mägi, Kristiina Oppi  

Opening: 18 June at 17:00  

Exhibition dates: 18 June – 19 July  Venue: Draakon Gallery, ground floor

Opening on 8.06 at 2:00 PM, in Narva
Exhibition open 8.06 – 22.06.2026

“A Breath” is an exhibition created as a school project by students of the Contemporary Art and Curatorial Studies programme at the Estonian Academy of Arts. It invites visitors to slow down and notice what often remains hidden between everyday moments.

The exhibition explores quiet moments of breath that arise both in solitude and in the company of others. These small pauses, often delicate and easily overlooked, carry reflection, intimacy, and a sense of shared presence. The project invites viewers to momentarily forget the turbulence and uncertainty of daily life and instead contemplate states of being, moments of silence, and quiet observation. Through works in various media, the exhibition creates a space where visitors can slow down and experience these fleeting yet meaningful moments.

At 2:30 PM, visitors are invited to enjoy an edible artwork by Mia Maria Rohumaa and Maria Wrang-Rasmussen. As Virginia Woolf wrote, “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”

You can take the 9:55 AM train departing from Tallinn.

Artists: Daria Morozova, Maria Wrang-Rasmussen, Mia Maria Rohumaa, Lotta Karoliina Räsänen, Kertu-Liisa Sarap
Curator: Karen Aasa

Opening on 8.06 at 2:00 PM, in Narva, Green Gallery 

Opening of the exhibition “I hate violence and I see it everywhere” at 18:00 at OKAPI Gallery in Tallinn

Yeva Sihachova

Curator: Ilja Jakovlev
Graphic design: Ksenia Kvitko

I hate violence and I see it everywhere.
Not only in war or catastrophe, but in the ordinary choreography of living alongside others.
I see how it impales the body, leaving no space for resistance.
I see how, through force, it restructures culture, embedding itself across generations as trauma.
I see it in the attempt to make everything defined – what does not fit is forced to take form, yet even when fixed, it remains out of place.
I see how it alters the body until adaptation turns pain into routine.
I see how it quietly inhabits the spaces between people.

The exhibition explores the ontology of violence: where it lives, how it manifests itself, what language it speaks, where it is born, and what it eventually transforms into.

The works focus on moments in which violence has not yet become fully visible or fully named – on the normalization of discomfort, on adaptation as a survival mechanism, on repetition, pressure, fixation, and the unstable distance between bodies.

Again and again, the exhibition returns to the question of connection.
Perhaps violence begins much earlier – in the attempt to fix, define, or fully overcome distance.

Fear becomes one of the central mechanisms within the exhibition. The attempt to understand violence can become an attempt to rationalize it, to make it predictable, and therefore less threatening. As if analysis could create a certain form of control over what is feared. But the need for control itself easily begins to reproduce the logic of violence.

The works do not offer a stable definition of violence. Instead, they trace the moments in which it quietly enters everyday life – reorganizing proximity, settling into ordinary forms of coexistence, and changing the ways bodies learn to exist alongside one another.

Drinks at the opening are provided by PÕHJALA!

Exhibition dates:
11.06–19.07.2026
Wed–Fri 12:00–18:00
Sat 12:00–16:00

OKAPI gallery
Niguliste tn 2, 10146, Tallinn

We thank the exhibition supporters:
EKA Student Council, OKAPI Gallery, PÕHJALA

Sõprus cinema 06.06. at 5–7 pm

Free entry

Join us at the screening of bachelor’s and master’s theses in animation of the Estonian Academy of Arts, which will take place on June 6 at 5 pm at the Sõprus cinema. The screening is free of charge.

Afterwards there will be a Q&A with the authors at EKA campus, Põhja pst 7.
The screening will take place within the framework of the EKA thesis festival TASE ’26. TASE is the Estonian Academy of Arts’ annual graduation theses festival, where the faculties of architecture, design, art culture and liberal arts present this year’s graduation theses at both bachelor’s and master’s levels. The TASE festival is growing every year, and this year we will present nearly 280 works to visitors.

Check out the TASE ’26 program and list of graduates on the website tase.artun.ee. The written parts of the graduation theses can be viewed in the EKA Digital Archive at eka.access.preservica.com.

Participants: Christopher Galinos, Karmen Müürsoo
Kadi Rebane, Viktoria Shmidt, Chia-Hui Lei, Vilmos Péter, Valerie Sarle, Fernanda Resende
TASE Anima organisers: Lyza Karoly Jarvis, Lilli-Krõõt Repnau
Graphic design: Grittel Kastan, Martin Kislõi, Richard Vainola
Visuals: Christopher Galinos

Welcoming drinks from Punch Club.

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