Exhibitions

On Saturday, 22 January Kelli Gedvil’s  solo exhibition “Purifying Your Skin” will open in the small gallery of the Tartu Art House. The exhibition is curated by Hanna-Liisa Lavonen.

The exhibition focuses on the methods by which virtual and physical tools change the look and texture of human skin as a material. The modified skin on advertisements looks soft, smooth and flawless. The dissonance between the real and the manipulated makes us crave for the artificial beauty standards and the advertised products seem like otherworldly magical potions. This, however, results in a frustrating cycle when one product, which was advertised as omnipotent, is followed by another, that is equally as ineffective.

By removing the physical and virtual manipulations from the skin, we notice its diverse and hidden ecosystem. This protective, elastic material reveals pores, pimples, wrinkles, sebum, and the creatures that help with its functioning. The present exhibition shows how our obsessive desire to improve our skin based on false visuals can make us forget about the real and natural dermal texture and its individual characteristics.

Kelli Gedvil (b 1994) has graduated from the Department of Painting (BA) and the Department of Contemporary Art (MA) at the Estonian Academy of Arts. She has also studied as an exchange student at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts and the Valand Academy in Sweden. Besides Estonia, she has participated in exhibitions in Sweden, Belgium, Germany, Canada, Hungary and Poland. Gedvil is the co-founder of the artist group Robin Ellis Meta and the gallerist and web developer at the online gallery post-gallery.online. This is her first solo exhibition in Tartu.

The exhibition is accompanied by a sound design by Natalia Anna Wójcik.

The technical support of the exhibition was provided by Ian-Simon Märjama.

Artist thanks: Egle Ehtjen, Kaupo Haukanõmm, Anti Kidron, Leegi Kiis, Madli Lippur, Kristen Rästas, Sten Saarits, Liina Siib.

The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia and open until 20 February.

www.kunstimaja.ee

Tartu Art House (Vanemuise 26, Tartu, Estonia) Wed–Mon 12–18. Exhibitions are free of charge.

The exhibitions of the Tartu Art House are supported by the Tartu Town Government and the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

Students of the Design and Technology Futures curriculum of EKA and TalTech will present the 3,000 utopias created during the autumn semester of Paide Theater on the “Shadow Council Committee Day” starting on Sunday, January 23 at 10.00 am. Guest of the day is Kersti Kaljulaid.

Utopias were designed with locals and people from Paide using a variety of co-design methods. In shaping the future, the problems were approached from different possibilities and four different scenarios were created:
1) how we eat in the future
2) how we plan the city and the community together with the vision
3) how we learn and
4) how we perceive time.

SCHEDULE:

10–11.30 – TalTech and EKA Design and Technology Futures students present the utopia of a small town they have created
11.30-11.45 break
11.45–12.45 Kersti Kaljulaid talks about her experiences with local governments
12.45-13.30 noon
13.30–16 Discussion rounds “Five actions that bring us closer to the utopia of a small town, but which do not require an additional 10 million in the city budget, but the joint contribution of the community”

The course is supervised by Martin Pärn, Francesco Martinez and Ruth-Helene Melioranski.

“Shadow Council Committee Day” is a discussion day on Sunday dedicated to the meeting, during which the shadow commissioners discuss all the topics that reach the city council in Paide. Each committee meeting will be opened by one expert’s insight, followed by a public hearing open to all those present.

More information on Facebook

Team AEGLA

Leaving calendars and rushing behind, we make room for action and different time rhythms. A system that takes into account and combines different tempos supports an environment where time is a value and its enjoyment is essential.

Team VISIONARY

A concept created to intensify the visions of Paide through interactive experiences

Team PARENG

The method of acquiring knowledge for a practical future

What would happen if the traditional upper secondary school system no longer existed and young people could build their own curriculum based on individual characteristics? “Pareng” introduces a vision of the future of the method of acquiring knowledge, in the development of which the young people of Paide participated.

Current solo exhibition “Of Becoming a Land(Scape)” serves as the third part of Britta Benno’s artistic research in the doctoral school at the Estonian Academy of Arts with the working title “Thinking in Layers, Imagining in Layers: Posthumanist Landscapes in the Extended Field of Drawing and Printmaking”.
Pre-reviewing of the exhibition will take place on 12.02.2022.

The protagonist in Benno’s last project in the series of personal exhibitions of the doctoral programme is landscape that formerly has appeared in a background role in Benno’s artwork. Image is becoming abstract and architecture is backing away from the stage. A layered landscape comes forth, the rocks in earth’s crust reveal themselves underneath the soil. At the same time, the crystallization of posthumanist philosophy in Britta Benno’s artistic (self)definition reveals itself through the agency of minerals. University of Tartu Natural History Museum with its collection of minerals is situated in the close proximity to Tartu Art House. Museum-like expositions, striped textures of fossils and conversations with geologists place the exhibition both to local time-space and the timeless spirit of art and science.

Tectonic layers are alive, moving and breathing, forming mountains and flooding continents. The layers arise from above while shaking and cracking holes and fissures to the earth’s crust. Similarly to the sunrise on the horizon, layers of gas and oil in the depths of earth emerge towards the surface and slowly transform the earth’s landscape. At the same time, somewhere another soil goes down in the depths of earth. In order to imagine the future, one has to look at the past to form a better understanding about the present.

Britta Benno comments on her artistic method: „While imagining the earth’s layers I am working with the means of art in layers. In a way, working in layers can be also called a method of piling up.  Materials, tracks and images cover each other just like the layers of Earth form a huge globe. How should one call the large-format artwork made of canvas, frame, coat, prints, watercolour, coal, acrylic paints, ink and plexiglass? Modelling paste, fabric and other (found) materials in combination with metamorphic rocks in litosphere, in the depths of earth, create new conceptual landscapes. Poetically flowing mountains can be also discovered while observing the heap of blanket on my bed, on a topographic map or in atlas of imaginary beings.”

Collaborational input to the exhibition works: Ragnar Neljandi (cameraman, animator, post-production), Kassandra Laur, Iti Oja, Kristiina Tali (installation), Juhan Vihterpal (composer).

The artist expresses her gratitude to: Laine Groeneweg (Smokestack Studio Hamilton), Pudy Tong (Open Studio Toronto),  Robert Zeigler (Cotton Factory Hamilton), Madis Kaasik (Prototyping Lab manager at the Estonian Academy of Arts), Mare Isakar, Juho Kirs (holder of geology collections at the University of Tartu, consultant), printmaking workshop of the Estonian Academy of Arts, Katrin Piile, Elnara Taidre.

Supporters: Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Academy of Arts, Nukufilm OÜ.

Video games museum LVLup! in Tallinn used to be the first and only one in the Baltics, but from the 15th of January until the 10th of April the cosy atmosphere of the museum will be recreated in the Narva Art Residency (NART). The project “VGA” invites guests to enjoy retro video games and reflect on the impact they’ve had on our culture through the perspective of contemporary art.

The project “VGA” (Video Games & Arts) is done in cooperation with LVLUp! museum, curator Juhan Soomets and Narva Art Residency. Johanna Rannula, the head of NART, said “In the nineties, video games were played at game rooms that were often located in the basements, so the basement of the residency was perfect for the museum. It’s also a way to bring new people to art exhibitions. Once they’ve finished playing games, the visitors go up the stairs and find themselves at an art exhibition that opens the subject from different perspectives. The two fields have not been juxtaposed in this way in Estonia before. It is unique, especially for Narva.”

In the last month, the project team has collected Soviet-era furniture across Ida-Virumaa. They needed to find 24 floor lamps, 10 sofas, 13 carpets, 4 armchairs, 5 stools, 11 TV tables, 4 curtain rods, curtains, cabinets, 2 coffee tables, many houseplants and a box of old vinyl. Now everything is ready for guests to travel back in time and spend time with friends and family playing Nintendo, Sega, Sony PlayStation, Guitar Hero and other legendary video games.

On the first floor is an exhibition of contemporary art called “Näotus” (‘Facelessness’), which makes sense of the video game collection and gives it new meanings. The exhibition is curated by Juhan Soomets and it includes works by Oleg Frolov (RU), Denisa Stefanigova (CZ), Alexei Gordin, Anna Shkodenko, Henri Hütt, Danel Kahar, Mihkel Kleis, Raul Keller, Kaspar P. Loit (EST).

The project opens on January 15 at 3 pm, admission is free. The opening day program includes curators’ tours, video game tournaments (and prizes for the winners!). The curators, DJ Nextraxx and DJ Суперюкс Лимитед, will be playing the music as well.

From January 16 to April 10, Narva Art Residency will be open as follows: the art exhibition “Näotus” is open Wed – Sun from 2 pm to 6 pm.

The video game museum LVLup! WarpRoom is open Wed – Sun from 2 pm to 9 pm. Bring your slippers!

The project is being implemented in partnership with the British Council under the People to People Cultural Engagement program.

Photos

Additional information

The exhibition “Remake” of EKA Art Education students can be seen on the information screens of EKA from January 14 to February 4.

The works of the art education students were completed within the “Creative project” subject .

Artists: Inga Ausmeel, Liina Oja, Liina Raidoja, Marju Rajasalu, Lilli-Krõõt Repnau, Triin Resik, Tanel Roomere, Piret Suviste, Zhanna Toht, Kertu Tort, Kalev Vapper, Merle Vingerfeld, Viire Jagomägi

Supervised by Anna-Kaisa Vita

The works can be seen on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th floors of EKA and on the screen of the auditorium on the Kotzebue street side. Videos with sound on the 2nd floor screen. 

More about EKA Art Education studies

“The Science of Freedom”
Third act of the 18th Tallinn Print Triennial main exhibition “Warm. Checking Temperature in Three Acts”
22.01—26.02.2022
Tue-Sat at 12—18 pm
Opening and curators’ tour: 21.01 at 3 pm.

Curator: Róna Kopeczky
Artists: Olson Lamaj, Igor Eškinja, Flo Kasearu, Nada Prlja, Katja Novitskova and Bojan Stojčić

Join us for the opening of the exhibition “The Science of Freedom” on January 21 at 3 pm at EKA Gallery! The curator will give an exhibition tour at the event. Entrance with Covid certificate.

“Warm. Checking Temperature in Three Acts” is a multi-part exhibition that primarily gives thought to the radical political, cultural and social turns that affect Central and Eastern Europe, and it also inscribes these changes in a global perspective through the lens of universal absurdity. The project gives voice to contemporary artists based in or originating from the Central and Eastern European region who reflect boldly and critically on burning issues such as the rise of far-right politics, globally misplaced priorities, the collapse of democracies, the shrinking of freedom – in both life and art – and the general sense of conditioned fear and hostility prevailing today.

Inviting artists from the regional contemporary art scene with existing works and new commissions, Warm comprises three intertwined cycles entitled The Nation Loves It, Pickle Politics and The Science of Freedom. The imaginary, conceptual theatre play that embraces these three acts is conceived as dramatic and intensifying narration. It articulates around the spectacles of absurdity with the intention to dissect, appropriate and distort them, but also to playfully propose humour and derision as an intellectual antidote or an imagined alternative that builds on visionary defiance and poetic escapism.

The third act entitled “The Science of Freedom” presents a variety of proposals to counteract the oppressing situations of present times by referring loosely to natural sciences, biological and mathematical systems that, sublimed by imagination and given unknown forms, allow to visualise alternative ways to exist, perceive and behave. Humour, poetics and absurdity are the main conceptual pillars of this section and are employed to playfully divert or lyrically distort reality through the gentle negation of fixed roles or functions. In this newly created situation, instincts prevail over order and discipline, and make space for rethinking the unquestionable rules of our existence, imagining and demanding the impossible, and ultimately freeing ourselves from existing and imposed frames.

18th Tallinn Print Triennial venues: KAI Art Center | Temnikova & Kasela Gallery | Põhjala Brewery and Tap Room | EKA Gallery | Liszt Institute Tallinn | Flo Kasearu House Museum | Kanuti Gildi Saal

“Body slam/ihu ramm” is both an exhibition and a performance, a collaboration with Mihkel Maripuu and Tarvo Porroson.

While the installation lives independent during the day, on five selected evenings the performers’ bodies and soundscape activate the space turning the exhibition into a performance.

Two women, uninterested in achieving security neither on stage nor in the social sphere, explore the relationship between material and body, giving fragility a form.

Bodies and clay – simultaneously fragile and strong by nature – are placed in a space of dialogue, where experience recreates itself in interaction, materiality carries a question, and an executed act becomes an artwork. Opportunities arise for collision, accident, and the constant construction and deconstruction of the material. There is a system, there is chance, there is mechanics, there is text and sound in fragments and order. The unexpected produces fragility.

Fragile, fragile, strong. The clay, the human body and the presence of a performer. Resisting weight but not a slam. What remains are only fragile bodies of the two women.

Priemere: 8.1 at 7 pm
Opening of the exhibition on 8.1 at 8.30 pm
Performances: 11.1/12.1/14.1/15.1 at 7 pm
Exhibition is open on 10.1–15.1 at 12–6 pm
@ ARS Art Factory Project Room
Artist talk after the performance: 14.01

Sound by Mihkel Maripuu
Technical solutions by Tarvo Porroson
Graphic design: Cristopher Siniväli
Photos: Gabriela Leopard
Lenght: 60’

The exhibition is for FREE

Buy tickets at Fienta

Body Slam on Facebook

The EKA Design Showcase, which is taking place for the fifth year in a row, will once again present the best collaboration projects of EKA students with companies and public sector organizations. The event introducing innovative designs born as a result of collaborative projects will take place at EKA on 12 January.

Concepts, prototypes and final results for innovative products and services will be presented, featuring new developments in the field of design. Students of the Faculty of Design of EKA and Design & Technology Futures (TalTech and EKA joint curriculum) will speak about their collaboration project with companies and organizations such as PERH, ABB, Magnetic MRO, etc.

All enterprises, EKA’s present and future cooperation partners, and enthusiasts of innovative design are kindly invited to attend!

The event will be held in EKA (room A101) but will also be broadcasted on http://tv.artun.ee/ and Facebook.

PROGRAMME

14.00 Greeting and introduction. Moderator Andres Lõo

14.10 – 14:30 Inspiration speech by digi-evangelist Marten Kaevats

14.30 – 14.45 EKA x PERH. EKA rector Mart Kalm and Agris Peedu, Chairman of the Board, North Estonia Medical Centre

14:45 – 15:50 Presentations of EKA collaboration projects:

• “Tallinn Signage System” – graphic design students and city of Tallinn
• “Bringing Private Guardians Closer to the Special Care Services Provided by AS Hoolekandeteenused” – interaction design students and Hoolekandeteenused AS
• “Sleeping Beauty” – media graphics students and Estonian Society of Hematology, North Estonia Medical Centre, Tartu University Clinic and Tallinn Children’s Hospital

15:50 – 16:05 Coffee break

16.05 – 17.10 Project presentations of the joint curriculum of EKA and TalTech Future of Design and Technology, in collaboration with Environment Agency.

• “Transitioning to better digital habits” – project dealing with digital pollution
• “Transitioning to more useful food” – project dealing with food waste in storage
• “Transitioning to healthier traditions” – project dealing with negative social and environmental effects of our traditional celebrations
• “Transitioning to more resilient cities” – project dealing with climate change effects that will manifest in the cities
• “Transitioning to better ecological decisions” – project dealing with how we cope with changing food sources in the future
• “Transitioning to a better relationship with the outdoors” – project dealing with people spending too much time in the unhealthy indoor environment

17.10 – 17.25 Coffee break

17.25 – 18.25 Presentations of EKA collaboration projects:

• “ABB alajaamade sobitumine keskkonda” – industrial and digital product design students and ABB AS
• “Sensory modular carpet” – textile design students with Tallinn Support Center JUKS
• “Baby cot design for airplane interior” – accessory design students and Magnetic MRO

Presentations are in Estonian and English, without translation.

The event is funded by European Union Regional Fund

Paljassaare time capsules: hiding, making, stalking, digging, hopping, skipping, crawling, barking, hawking, hoping, expecting, lingering, sludging, metabolizing, digesting, dismantling, defending, demolishing, augmenting, building, intending, archiving, recreating  …  (etc never-ending)

Paljassaare, a place of wonderment in the periphery of Tallinn’s imagination, a nature’s reserve, a utopian paradise, a blessing in disguise, a magic potion, a myth, a cradle of birds, so green, so much green and so much peace. On the other side, Paljassaare has a disturbing presence of a parallel reality of illusions of all kinds that makes this peninsula a multiplicity of time capsules. It invites us to break beyond the realms of past, present, and future, and to peel through its endless secrets and triumph over this highly contested land.

Armed with warm clothing and winter boots, we invite you to join the group of first-year Urban Studies Master students at the Estonian Academy of Arts for the final critique of their works developed in the framework of the Urbanization Studio, tutored by Keiti Kljavin and Andra Aaloe. 

The exhibition-expedition will take place in situ all across Paljassaare and includes ten individual project stations (audio-walks and talks, immersive projections and installations, parties and screenings, exhibitions) approachable by foot. Be prepared for crispy cold temperatures, a lot of walking and long hours spent outside and bring along an extra pair of warm socks, snacks and a mug for tea refills along the way.

We kindly ask you to bring along your own earphones and devices with a data connection. If possible, take along a charger and/or a power bank to make sure your device can successfully endure this expedition.

Practicalities:

We will meet on Saturday, the 18th of December, at 10.45 (bus nr. 59 arrival time) at Pikakari bus stop, where, followed by a short introduction, we will collectively move towards the first project location of the day. The tour will end around 17.00. The event will be held in English.

The authors exposed: Kush Badhwar, Khadeeja Farrukh, Christian Hörner, Nabeel Imtiaz, Luca Liese Ritter, Paul Simon, Nora Soo, Katrin Tomiste, Paula Kristiāna Veidenbauma, Friederike Zängl.

Studio leads: Keiti Kljavin and Andra Aaloe

** FOR EMERGENCIES: if you get lost during the day you can call Paula Veidenbauma +37128642280**

More information and programme here!

An art installation “You Still Live In the Silence Between My Walls” made by the second year students of the sculpture department will open on Friday 17th of December at 7pm at Raja building.

In this exhibition the artists are asking what it is to be an effigy in the city? To view the passing of time? To be completely still while everything & everybody changes around you?

By capturing the day to day experiences of statues born under the roof of Raja, but now thriving in the elements, the installation gives us the chance to rest in their calm – a collective moment of wonder in an ever turning world.

Participating artists: Lisethe Maas, Inessa Saarits, Merilin Põldsam, Aleksandra Nyyssönen, Pablo Apellaniz, Michael O Reilly, Lauri Lest, Gregorio Migliaccio, Rain Saarik

Supervised by Sten Saarits

“You still live in the silence between my walls” will be open from December 17th to 21st, from 3pm to 7pm each day