Exhibitions

“I leave
With tears in my throat
To where
The roads are wrapped in mist
Riga, my love remains behind.”
— Vennaskond

Join us on Friday, April 3 at 19:00 for the premiere of Karolina Peterson’s graduation film at Roosikrantsi 8b Gallery.

The film will be screened daily from April 3–13 at: 12:00 · 13:45 · 15:30 · 17:15 · 19:00 · 20:45.

Karolina Peterson (aka Kara Popicon) is a Latvian artist from an Estonian-Russian background who spent the past five years studying in Tallinn. Returning to Riga after a long time away, she found herself feeling like a stranger in her own home.

Her solo exhibition “Riga, My Love” explores this sense of distance through film – capturing the city both as it lives in memory and as it exists today.

The work is also shaped by her participation in a series of protests in Riga advocating for women’s and migrants’ rights, where she created a new artistic action each time. These experiences brought a political dimension into her practice.

This new video piece traces the evolution of that politicization, interwoven with personal reflections on loss, identity, and the emotional disconnection from home.
Supervisor: Anita Kremm

Film duration: 96 minutes
Language: English

Exhibition is supported by the Faculty of Fine Arts, Estonian Academy of Arts.

“A prairie dog town refers to the vast underground networks of tunnels and chambers constructed by prairie dogs across the grasslands. At the surface, these colonies appear as little more than a dispersed field of cone-shaped mounds. Beneath this modest topography, however, lies an extensive and highly organized architecture: a labyrinth of tunnels connecting nesting chambers, waste disposals, listening bays, nurseries, and bolt holes, before branching into distinct wards and family burrows.

Prairie Dog Town takes this subterranean architecture as both structure and allegory. The exhibition turns toward other underground networks—such as those operating within the logic of cartoons—where the burrow becomes a conceptual passage. Moving below the visible surface, tunnels open onto chambers of a more devious nature: spaces where  logics conceal themselves, circulate, and multiply.” – H.D.

“Prairie Dog Town” is Hayden Daughtry’s inaugural show in Estonia. Originally from South Carolina, entering the European art scene through the Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, Hayden lets the uncanny constructs of the outside seep into the gallery, places where it might not otherwise allow. Sometimes a playful veneer might be a scratchcard  with an inverse prize. His work takes shape to its surroundings.

Opening March 27th at 18:00, then to be visited 28.03 – 05.04

M-T By appointment

F-S 14:00 – 18:00

Asmus Soodla
“Tool Room, Gallery”
EKA Gallery 4.–26.04.2026
Open Tue–Sat 12–6 pm Sun 12–4 pm, free entry (NB! EKA Gallery is closed on Good Friday, April 3 and Easter Sunday, April 5!)
Opening: Thursday, April 2 at 6 pm
Guided tours: Fri, April 10 at 1 pm (est) / Sun, April 12 at 2.30 pm (est) / Sun, April 12 at 3.30 pm (eng)

Asmus Soodla’s exhibition “Tool Room, Gallery” focuses on the art gallery as an ecosystem, where value-based distinction between the result and the process doesn’t exist. The conceptual starting point of the project is the internal conditions and work processes of the gallery as an institution, as well as its spatial logic. The exhibition focuses on activities that are usually hidden from the visitor’s gaze, but which play a decisive role in how the artwork and the viewer meet.

The project includes a spatial intervention that occupies the entire gallery, highlighting the spaces of EKA Gallery and its contents. The conceptual framework also includes the group exhibition “Field Notes from Immediate Proximity”, the curation of which Soodla entrusted to artist Riin Maide. This role-playing gesture treats the form of collaboration as a separate artwork.

Asmus Soodla (b. 2003) is a Tallinn-based artist and art technician. Soodla’s practice is conceptual and spatially sensitive, often employing sculpture, text, and photography. His work is primarily inspired by the existing environment and objects, unraveling their operational logic and history. Through his installative interventions, invisible systems and traces of human thought are brought into focus. Soodla earned a Bachelor’s degree in Installation and Sculpture (2025) from the Estonian Academy of Arts and completed a preparatory course in architecture and interior design (2022) at the EKA Open Academy. Additionally, he has furthered his studies at artist Simon Starling’s studio in Copenhagen.

Technical support: Mattias Veller
Graphic design: Sunny Lei
The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Tallinn City and Sadolin Estonia.
Opening drinks from mirai™ and Põhjala Brewery.

FIELD NOTES FROM IMMEDIATE PROXIMITY
EKA Gallery storage room 4.–26.04.2026
Open Tue–Sat 12–6 pm Sun 12–4 pm, free entry (NB! EKA Gallery is closed on Good Friday, April 3 and Easter Sunday, April 5!)
Opening: Thursday, April 2 at 6 pm
Guided tours: Fri, April 10 at 1 pm (est) / Sun, April 12 at 2.30 pm (est) / Sun, April 12 at 3.30 pm (eng)

The exhibition “Field Notes from Immediate Proximity” provides an insight into artists’ work and creative spaces. In addition to documenting the studios and homes of six creators, they also become windows into their inner world.

Postcards, tools, potted plants and piles of books that have been captured on the artist’s canvas or photograph, reveal moments from the artists’ everyday lives, from the spaces where the artist spends the most time doing their work – on the one hand, it is an opportunity to see inside the creative processes of contemporary artists, into their different practices, on the other hand, these works are simply interpretations of personal space, ways of seeing everyday life.

The narrow and cramped architecture of EKA Gallery’s storage space brings the viewer closer to the works and their details. Together with the unusual exhibition space, the works form a new spatial whole in which different visual languages ​​and perspectives can meet and merge.

The exhibition was initiated within the conceptual framework of Asmus Soodla’s solo exhibition “Tool Room, Gallery”.

Riin Maide (b. 1997) is an artist and scenographer based in Tallinn, Estonia. Maides practice centers around the connection and comparison of two- and three-dimensional media and creation of staged environments. Maide Maide has obtained a MA degree in scenography (2025) and BA in Graphic Art in the department of graphic art at the Estonian Academy of Arts. In addition, she has studied at the Department of Alternative and Puppet Theater at DAMU in Prague and in the Performative Arts class of Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She has received several scholarships and awards, including the Wiiralt scholarship in 2023 and Young Artist award of Estonian Academy of Arts in 2020.

Artists: Kristi Kongi, Joosep Kivimäe, Ann Pajuväli, Anu Vahtra and Lieven Lahaye, Mattias Veller
Curated by: Riin Maide
Technical support: Mattias Veller
Graphic design: Sunny Lei
The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Tallinn City and Sadolin Estonia.
Opening drinks from mirai™ and Põhjala Brewery.

EKA library, 6.03.–15.05.2026

Dear friend,

It has been a long time since we last heard from you. Last time we spoke, you were working on some prints in the graphic arts workshop with a roller in your hand and ink on your fingers. How is it going? We would love to see some trials or progress pictures. At the moment we are also in the process of doing some tests. I have added a sample in the envelope. Check it out and tell us what you think!

Let’s keep in touch.

The exhibition shows works from the EKA Print Exchange project initiated by the department of Graphic Art at the Estonian Academy of Arts. Printmaking students from different universities were invited to take part and submit an original print edition. Each print was shipped to Tallinn, sorted and sent back to participants, so everyone received a random selection of ten prints.

The vision of this project was to create new connections between printmaking departments and students through collaboration and sharing physical works. So, we wrote to our penpals and were curious what students of other universities were up to. Depictions of current ideas, projects or any experiments were warmly welcomed as a response.

Four universities participated in the exchange: Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA),
Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO), University of the West of England (UWE), The Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław.

Exhibitions of the Print Exchange have taken place at the universities participating in the exchange, and the first presentation in Estonia took place in June-July 2025 at the TYPA Balcony Gallery in Tartu.

We would like to thank EKA graafika, TYPA, Anna Kodź, Aleksandra Janik and Angie Butler.

Organisers of the EKA Print Exchange: Alona Chuprina, Margarita Feofanova, Chantal Gerschuetz, Merit Himmelreich, Triin Mänd, Helena Pass, Marten Prei, Sandra Puusepp and our supervisor Charlotte Biszewski.

Exhibition design at the EKA library: Sandra Puusepp and Marten Prei. 

3rd-year Graphic Art students are showcasing the artists’ book as an independent medium of visual art and an original artwork. The authors draw from personal experiences and memories, exploring themes of physicality, history, and ethical boundaries:

• Aliisa Ahtiainen presents a grandfather’s life story in risography and a “breathing” book inspired by her grandmother’s experience in a tuberculosis sanatorium.
• Jacqueline-Desiree Rosenthal exhibits a piece made of tattooed pigskin rawhide, raising questions about morality and the parallels between animals and humans.
• Olga Dubrovskaja utilizes her background as an intensive care doctor to explore the experience of death through her own and her colleagues’ perspectives. In her second book titled “Delight”, she focuses on the moments of life.
• Adriana Jinmao Biosca Sánchez examines the volatility of memory through materiality and layers of printing.
• Robin August Vöörmann deals with gender identity, drawing parallels with changes in nature.

Supervisors: Eve Kask, Eve Kaaret (binding) and Viktor Gurov. 

Exhibition dates: 6.03.–15.05.2025

“To feel the pull of desire is to feel the presence of absence.”
-Anne Carson, “Eros The Bitterweet”

It was the gods’ punishment to separate the whole being into two, condemned to fit the chase of our ideal fullness into one lifetime — and pathetically, we turn back to gods to show us the ways we can be united again. Some say this love belongs only to gods themselves. Still, we defy that notion treacherously, and we face whatever form of divinity we believe in, to plea:
“I wish.”
To wish is to indulge in the lack. The lover does not only wish for the ephemeral sense of fulfillment, but eventually wishing itself serves to satisfy the lover’s hunger. The wish transforms into the sustenance and our appetite refuses to act as a form of weakness, but as devotion.
The exhibition “The Wishing Well” is simultaneously a practice ground and a receipt of reverence. Light a candle, throw a coin, count the petals and make your wish.

opening 05.03.2026 at 6PM

06.03. – 12.04.2026

open Wed-Sun 12.00-18.00

KETT gallery / Aparaaditehas, Kastani 42, Tartu

Irmak Semiz (b. 1997, Istanbul) is a multidisciplinary artist living in Tallinn, currently pursuing a master’s degree in contemporary art at the Estonian Academy of Arts. Working primarily through sculpture, installation, and animation, their practice focuses on expressing contradictory identities, decisions, and emotional states, processed through the lens of humor, connection, and myth-making.
Jana Ribkina (b. 1995, Riga) is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Riga. Working primarily with ceramics, textiles, and illustration, she explores reflections from her daily life through a playful approach, while drawing inspiration from folklore and fantasy. Her work seeks to weave the personal and the mythical into one continuous thread.

Graphic design: Paul Graßler
The exhibition is supported by the City of Tartu and the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

5–31 March 2026

On Wednesday, 4 March at 18:00, Katariin Mudist’s exhibition “Temporary Solution”(Ajutine lahendus) will open at ARS Showcase Gallery.

“Temporary Solution” brings together doorholders collected from various institutions, mainly from Estonia’s cultural field. Doorholders are born out of necessity: something needs to be held open for a moment, something needs to be let through. Yet a temporary solution tends to become permanent without anyone noticing. In this way, an accidental form and material can become surprisingly universal.

The exhibition focuses on small moments of annoyance: when your bike tyre is flat again; when you forget your towel, but discover it at the gym; when you have to return the shirt you ordered; when the internet keeps buffering during a film; when someone explains something you already know; when, at the grocery store, the line you chose is the slowest, or when the doorholder is missing. This annoyance is a minor disturbance that, through repetition, begins to shape attention, movement, and one’s attitude toward space. A door has been kept open for years with the help of an apparently insignificant piece of material. But one day, arms full of things, that familiar wooden block is no longer there. There is a brief delay and mild irritation: something else is quickly found as a substitute, the door is held open again, and work continues. The moment passes and is very likely forgotten immediately.

Over the course of a year, the collected doorholders have held open different kinds of doors (main entrances, side doors, back doors, etc.) and operate according to different principles: as a wedge, as a threshold stopper, or as weight. What unites these objects is that they come from institutions where doors are not merely architectural elements but tools of access and work organisation. Doorholders are small, unofficial spatial interventions that make movement smoother and signal for whom a space “works. ” Removing them and gathering them into one room reveals a layer of temporary solutions on which institutional space quietly depends.

The door to the exhibition is always (temporarily) open.

Katariin Mudist is an interdisciplinary Estonian artist who believes that the most telling things are often those that usually remain behind the door. She is interested in small annoyances that arise, for example, when a door refuses to cooperate- whether it’s an automatic door that won’t open or a missing doorstop. Humour and irony run through her practice. She examines social norms and the practices and meanings of being an artist within the context of the cultural field and its institutions, using material and process-based approaches. She is currently studying in the Fine Arts Studio programme at the Estonian Academy of Arts, searching for common ground between visual and material-centred art. Mudist holds an MA in Contemporary Art (EKA, 2022) and a BA in Media and Advertising Design (Pallas University of Applied Sciences, 2018). She has received the Adamson-Eric Scholarship (2025) and the Young Sculptor Award (2025). In 2026, together with Keithy Kuuspu, she received the main prize of the Visual and Applied Arts Endowment for the exhibition “Unfortunately, You Were Not Selected This Time” (2025) and the performative Awards Gala (2025).

Exhibition team:
Exhibition design and production assistance: Alden Jõgisuu
Graphic design: Katariin Mudist
Supporters: Punch Club, Põhjala, Estonian Artists’ Association
Special thanks: Alan Voodla, Johanna Mudist, Eva Nava, Keithy Kuuspu, Maria Elise
Remme, Helena Pass, and all the institutions from which the collected doorholders originate.

Exhibition open:
5–31 March 2026
Mon–Fri 12–18, Sat 12–16

On March 1st, Natalia Mirzoyan’s exhibition “Winter in March” will be opened in Telliskivi Container Gallery.

The art exhibition Winter in March is inspired by the short animated film Winter in March, created at the Estonian Academy of Arts and produced by film studio Rebel Frame. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2025 and has since won nearly twenty international awards at animation and film festivals around the world. It also received the Estonian Cultural Endowment’s annual award for Best Animated Film of 2025.

The exhibition expands the poetic and political world created in the film, exploring helplessness and existential fear experienced by individuals living under a repressive regime. The film tells the true story of a young couple from St. Petersburg, Kirill and Dasha. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shakes their lives. Dasha finds the strength to protest, while Kirill withdraws into himself, sinking deeper and deeper into depression. They decide to leave their homeland and set off for Georgia. The journey is metaphysical the train travels along the Russian-Ukrainian border, where the landscape outside the window is filled with symbols of war. Meanwhile, fellow passengers behave as if nothing is happening. Through snowstorms and fear, the most painful moment arrives at the border: will they be allowed to continue? Although they eventually reach Georgia, their greatest fear catches up with them in another way — from an unexpected place.

The exhibition offers visitors the opportunity to immerse themselves in this world of imagery and emotional associations. The space is designed as a journey, leading the viewer from intimate memory fragments into a broader political and poetic dimension. The aim of the exhibition is to create an immersive experience that connects the film and the exhibition into one whole. It is also important to provide the audience with an opportunity to perceive the personal and collective experiences of war, repression, and migration, and thereby initiate discussion about democracy, memory, and resistance.

Artist Natalia Mirzoyan
Curator Santa Zukker
Artist Team: Rebecca Kruus, Alexander Toodu, Kadi Rebane, Annaliisa Lepik, Katrina Oll, Marina Hirv, Dashka Dementeva, Saskia Sikk

Artists: Rover Indigo Bertels-Andréa, Þórey Björk Halldórsdóttir, Denis Kudrjašov, Ivor Mikker, Daniil Musesovs, Elise Marie Olesk, Kertu Rannula, Lotta Karoliina Räsänen, Éric-Olivier Thériault, Kail Timusk, Lume Tuum, Elo Vahtrik, Ats-Anton Varustin, Maria Wrang-Rasmussen

Metamorphosis – simultaneous disintegration and formation; melting, bending, flowing, estrangement from function.

Emerging sculpture explores transformation, transitions, and continuous, uncertain in-between states – in the body, in material, and in space. Traditional techniques and materials encounter synthetic, industrial, and technological elements, generating tension between the organic and the artificial, the rural and the urban, the past and the present.

The works address questions of perception and adaptation: how to find direction in fog, in subterranean layers, or within internal transformations? How do we orient ourselves in a world where the visible is no longer the primary source of knowledge? Can disintegration and fading serve as prerequisites for creation and becoming? What role do ritual, tradition, and vanishing skills play in a technologically charged everyday life? Where does the body end and the environment begin – or does such a boundary still exist?

Established in 2012, the award aims to highlight and recognize emerging sculptors and installation artists currently pursuing their studies. The exhibition presents works created during the 2025/26 academic year by the 14 shortlisted artists. The exhibition is organized by the Sculpture and Installation Department of the Estonian Academy of Arts. A Grand Prix as well as second and third prizes will be awarded.

The exhibition is open to visitors at ARS Project Space from 7–22 March, 12:00–18:00. At the opening of NSPN on 6 March at 4:00 PM, the Grand Prix as well as the 2nd and 3rd prizes will be awarded. A special prize will also be presented by the Estonian Association of Young Contemporary Art.

Exhibition team: Laura Põld, Kirke Kangro, Taavi Talve, Visa Nurmi, Eva Mahhov

Supported by: Estonian Cultural Endowment, Estonian Academy of Arts, Estonian Artists’ Association, Põhjala, Vaskjala Creative Residency

Special thanks: Kunst.ee magazine, ARS Project Space