Exhibitions

Estonian Academy of Arts Museum exhibition:
A Child Thing. Children’s designs by students at EKA

21.10–29.11.2022 at EKA Gallery

Professional design for children is broadly a phenomenon of the last hundred years. The field of children’s design has became more significant in the Estonian Academy of Arts since 1970s. More and more attention has been payed on the actual needs, physical and mental characteristics of young people. From the aesthetic utility objects of the 20th century, design is increasingly moving towards solutions that engage children to develop their creativity.

Numerous established fashion, textile and leather artists, ceramicists, designers and interior architects in Estonia have worked with children’s designs during their student years. Besides the practical world of design, the exhibition also presents book illustrations, theatre costumes and animated films from the realm of fairy tales that stimulate children’s imagination.

The exhibition covers almost a century, starting with the rooster illustration for the ABC book from the State School of Arts and Crafts time and ending with interactive objects from the last decade. The exhibition is largely based on the historical collection of the Estonian Academy of Arts Museum. Most of the student design projects remained on paper. However, designers have generously contributed to the exhibition their items that were turned from ideas into real objects more recently. The signs of wear on some toys and therapeutic facilities testify that they have been enjoyed by children in hospitals, orphanages, libraries or playgrounds, thus serving their purpose.

Curators of the exhibition: Jelizaveta Sedler and Reeli Kõiv

Exhibition is supported by Cultural Endowment of Estonia

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TASE’21 and EKA (Estonian Academy of Arts) Young Artist’s Award winner Karolin Poska in Hobusepea Gallery!

TASE’21 and EKA (Estonian Academy of Arts) Young Artist’s Award winner Karolin Poska will open her solo exhibition Pressure of the Gaze in Hobusepea gallery at 18:00 on Wednesday, October 19th, 2022. Exhibition will be open until November 14, 2022.

Karolin Poska: “Do you know the feeling when someone else has fixed their gaze on you? You can simply tell that someone is controlling you, stalking you with the gaze, measuring you or trying to create a visual contact. You feel it even if it is outside the field of vision, or you may realize this from the corner of your eye.

People assure that they literally feel how the eyes of “Mona Lisa” painted by Leonardo da Vinci are following them, irrespective of the physical location of the spectator. This phenomenon – when the eyes of an artwork observe the spectator in the room – is called the Mona Lisa effect. However, researchers have found that this phenonenon won’t apply to Mona Lisa since the gaze of the painted figure has been directed too much to the right.

Creating a direct eye contact is perhaps the most frequent and powerful non-verbal signal exchanged between human beings; it is also a means of intimacy, frightening and social influence. Eye contact is such a primeval way of communication common to all animal species: predators intensely keep their eye on their prey before the moment of dashing towards it; babies become intimate with their parent through visual contact; fish turn their eyes black during an aggressive act.

The oldest found fossil’s eyes are 540 million years old, the first Homo habilis or the archaic human dates back to approximately 2 million years ago. Now I feel different when looking out of the window, knowing that I am using eyes of the precedecessors being 538 million years older than a human being.

It is easier to catch human gazes than those of other species since human eyeball has a special construction – we have more sclera (the white layer of an eye). That, in turn, makes it much easier to identify the movement of the iris of an eye that has darker colour as well as determining the direction of the gaze due to constrasty colours. Surprisingly, human eyes have the closest similarity with the ones of an octopus and a squid who both have big eyes consisting of the lens, the iris and one big vitreous body.

According to my calculations, the old town of Tallinn has 77 street cameras, so you were probably looked at already when you were on your way to the gallery. You probably did not perceive this because the surveillance cameras have less constrasty eyes and different construction. Also, the sculpture in the old town that you probably passed did not follow you with its eyes since it wears glasses and unfortunately has no sclerae. And yet, lots of people say that it is namely the eyes of an artwork that make you feel something.

While preparing for the current exhibition, I went to galleries and streets and looked at art; and also looked at others looking at art and let the artworks look at me and my act of looking. I really hope that you will find something worth looking at!”

Karolin Poska (b. 1991) is a performance artist, choreographer and dancer who lives and works in Tallinn. She has graduated from the department of dance art at the Viljandi Culture Academy of the University of Tartu. In her artistic practice, Poska tries to understand what it feels to live in the world at the given moment – she enjoys transforming reality, playing with objects and the audience’s expectations. Poska recently obtained MA degree in contemporary art at the Estonian Academy of Arts and she was given the Young Artist Award. Poska’s two recent works “For Your Nirvana” (2020) and “Untititled” (2021) were nominated to the Estonian Theatre Awards in the category of dance and performance art.

Original photo: Helemai Alamaa

Thank you for the dialogue and technical assistance: Theodore Parker and Maret Tamme.

Exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

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

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Estonia will be represented at the 4th Triennial of Young Textile Art in Lodž (YTAT) by EKA textile artists Helena Kisant, Anni Kivisto and Krista Leesi.

As many as 18 art schools from 11 countries responded to the invitation of the Strzemiński Academy of Fine Arts in Lodz: Sweden, Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, Japan, USA, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Slovenia and Poland. Students and last-year graduates of these schools will present the most interesting realizations of the past three years during the competition exhibition.

EKAt on esindamas 3 autori tööd: 

Helena Kisant “skin of nature”
Design Faculty Textile Design, second year BA 2021/2022
Tutors: Krista Leesi, Piret Valk

Anni Kivisto „Crossing Everyday Life and Creative Process: Handmade Rug in Punch Needle  Technique“
Design Faculty Textile Design, Master’s Programme Graduate  2020/2021
Tutors: Taavi Hallimäe, Johanna Ulfsak

For the first time, an element of the event will be the YTAT MENTORS exhibition, showcasing the works of academic teachers from the art academies invited to participate in the competition. 

In this category, the work “CANT STOP DANCIN’” by Krista Leesi, assistant professor of EKA Textile Department, is on display.

The exhibition will be open from October 9th to December 31st 2022 iat the City Art Gallery in Lodž, 44th Sienkiewicza Street, Poland.

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GeneralSharing: 27m above the Sea opening on October 15, from 15:00 to 18:00

GeneralSharing is a platform created by a group of students from the Baltic and Nordic countries, the purpose of which is to be a meeting place for introducing art practices to young artists starting their careers.

GeneralSharing: 27m Above the Sea is an exhibition born out of different sharings of working processes and artistic knowledge, which highlights different work methods and diverse fresh approaches to art in the student community.

The second part of the exhibition, GeneralSharing: 19m above the Sea, opens on October 20 at Köysiratagalleria and Taiteen Talo in Turku, Finland.

Artists:

Alva Törnqvist, Cheonghye Sophia, Chih-Tung Lin, Clea Filippa Ingwersen, Ebba Birkflo, Ellinor Hagman, Ida Hundertmark, Katariin Mudist, Megan Auður, Olev Kuma, Patricia Carolina, Peik Elias, Sabīne Šnē, Sofia Haapamäki, Zsófi Boda 

Special thanks to:

Kirke Kangro, Bjarki Bragason, Kuno Network Grant, Lina Koseleva, Kati Saarits and Vent Space

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On Wednesday, October 12, at 18:00, we will open the joint art exhibition titled “Synthesis of Landscapes” by Art Academy students from four different departments at ARS Art Factory Studio 53 and 98 (Pärnu mnt 154, Tallinn).

The group exhibition uses the spatio-temporal outputs typical of installation art to question the artists’ individual observations about their living environment and it’s influencing factors. Versatile collections of found, handmade and ready-made materials create micro-landscapes in the exhibition space, presenting fragments of the artists’ collective thought-space. Gestures of opposition and mirroring through material propositions are supported by sound and video art experiments. Participants are Artists are students of EKA Jewellery and Blacksmithing, Glass Art and Ceramics departments.

Participating artists: Annali Kruusamägi, Elis Liivo, Gaida-Erica Pärn, Helen Tiits, Laura Stina, Maarja Hallika, Maarja Sildvee, Madli Pajos, Marta Vikentjeva, Paul Aadam Mikson, Valeria Poljakova

The exhibition is open 13.–16.10 from 12:00 to 18:00

Graphic design by Madli Pajos

Supervised by Sten Saarits

Exhition is supported by Estonian Artists’ Association and Estonian Academy of Arts

More on ARS Art Factory: www.arsfactory.ee

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Scenography student Joel Väli’s diploma work “In memoriam Bellingshausen” at the VAT Theater, 10.-18. at October.

Actors: Ursel Tilk (Estonian Drama Theater) and Markus Truup

Artist-director: Joel Väli (EA scenography)

Playwright: Andreas Kübar

Lighting artist: Leon Augustin Allik

Musical consultant: Markus Robam

Producer: Egert Kadastu

Performances 13.10/14.10/16.10/17.10/18.10

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Online launch of Memory Studies journal Special issue “The Return of Suppressed Memories in Eastern Europe: Locality and Unsilencing Difficult Histories”

Online launch on Facebook

29 September 17.00–18.30 EEST time, 16.00–17.30 CET time and 15.00–16.30 BST time
How are suppressed memories returning in Eastern Europe? What role does locality play in this process? How has this process been theorized and studied? And what kind of impact has Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine had to these articulations?

We are happy to invite you to the online launch of the recent Memory Studies journal Special Issue “The Return of Suppressed Memories in Eastern Europe: Locality and Unsilencing Difficult Histories” that was published in June 2022! During the launch authors will briefly introduce their articles that were published in the special issue by focusing on the notion of locality, one of the main keywords in this issue. The response of memory scholar Natalija Arlauskaitė will follow.

The special issue is part of the project “Communicating Difficult Pasts” (2019–2023), a project initiated by Estonian Academy of Arts and Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art and curated by Margaret Tali and Ieva Astahovska, who are also the editors of this Memory Studies Special issue. It grows out of the symposium Prisms of Silence organized in Tallinn, Estonian Academy of Arts in 2020.

Participants: Roma Sendyka (Jagiellonian University/Humboldt University), Asja Mandić (University of Sarajevo), Shelley Hornstein (York University), Mischa Twitschin (Goldsmiths, University of London), Ieva Astahovska (Latvian Centre for Contemporary Arts) and Margaret Tali (Estonian Academy of Arts). Natalija Arlauskaitė (Vilnius University) will act as a respondent.

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