Exhibitions

This spring, 15 young artists are graduating from the MA Contemporary Art program at the Estonian Academy of Arts. 13 of them are exhibiting their MA thesis projects at TASE ‘25 graduation show at Rävala 8 and two at the community garden of Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM), Kursi 5.

Rävala 8, III floor:
KitKit Para: ‘Shrek and The Aphrodite Beans’, supervisor Anu Vahtra, reviewer Anna Jensen
Yuko Kinouchi: ‘embodiment – -> de-zombification’, supervisors Madis Kurss and Else Lagerspetz, reviewer Taavi Suisalu
Brit Kikas: ‘Touch’, supervisors Tõnis Jürgens and Else Lagerspetz, reviewer Piibe Kolka
Viktoria Martjanova: ‘Visit’, supervisors Anita Kremm and Anu Vahtra, reviewer Sten Saarits

Rävala 8, II floor:
Eleftheria Kofidou: ‘Rapprochement’, supervisors Laura Cemin and Else Lagerspetz, reviewer Evelyn Raudsepp
Tea Lemberpuu: ‘Impersonal self-portrait. The daily choice to be seen or to hide’, supervisors Anu Vahtra and Maris Karjatse, reviewer Hasso Krull
Gerda Hansen: ‘One Piece at a Time’, supervisors Tõnis Saadoja and Else Lagerspetz, reviewer Lilian Hiob-Küttis
Liza Tsindeliani: ‘Trauma Made Me Hot’, supervisors Paul Kuimet and Maris Karjatse, reviewer Anna Škodenko
Chloé Geinoz: ‘Water, fountains and witches’, supervisors Liina Siib and Maris Karjatse, reviewer Elo-Hanna Seljamaa
Mia Felić: ‘What Goes Around’, supervisors Piibe Kolka and Maris Karjatse, reviewer Tõnis Jürgens

Rävala 8, I floor:
Kristi Vendelin: ‘Põletab, närib, ronib’, supervisors Kaspar Tamsalu and Maris Karjatse, reviewer Hanna Piksarv

Rävala 8, basement floor:
Vitor Pascale: ‘Room for Play’, supervisors David Ross and Else Lagerspetz, reviewer Jaanus Samma
Joel Jõevee: ‘selfportrait’, ‘self portrait 2’, ‘birthing pains’, ‘intimate separation’, supervisors Holger Loodus and Taavi Varm, reviewer Peeter Laurits

Community garden of EKKM, Kursi 5:
Yvette Bathgate & Jake Shepherd: ‘a space to gather, a place to grow’, supervisors Yvonne Billimore and Joss Allen, reviewers Ann Mirjam Vaikla and Sandra Pihlapson (Kosorotova)

Also participating in TASE ´25 exhibition: Lara Brener, Eri Rääsk, Iryna Tanasiichuk, Aivar Tõnso, Paula Vool

This year the thesis committee consists of five members for the Estonian graduating group and of six members for the international group. The core members are: artist and filmmaker Ingel Vaikla, curator and head of CCA Estonia Maria Arusoo, artist and educator Taavet Jansen. For June 3, they are joined by two more Estonian speaking members: artists and educators Marge Monko and Mart Vainre. For June 4 & 5, they are joined by three international members: writer, editor, and independent researcher Eric Otieno Sumba, and artists and educators John Grzinich and Léann Herlihy.

Maria Arusoo is a curator and dramaturge. Since 2013, she has been the director of the Estonian Centre for Contemporary Art and the commissioner of the Estonian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. She holds an MA in Art Theory from Goldsmiths, University of London, and has worked as an assistant to Martin Creed. Arusoo has curated numerous exhibitions and conferences, published widely, taught at the Estonian Academy of Arts and SAIC, and edited several art publications. Her current projects include a solo exhibition by Edith Karlson in Vilnius (2025) and the Estonian Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale (2026), featuring Merike Estna.

Taavet Jansen is an interdisciplinary artist whose work integrates movement, digital technologies, and interactive performance. His practice focuses on blurring the boundaries of art at the intersection of the viewer’s physical and digital presence. Jansen has situated his work in various environments, including theatre, galleries, and virtual spaces—his current focus lies in audience engagement in hybrid spaces and mixed reality. He is currently completing a PhD at the Estonian Academy of Arts.

Ingel Vaikla is an artist and filmmaker based in Brussels. Her practice focuses on the representation of architecture in relation to communities, working with video, 16 mm film, and found footage. Rather than depicting architecture as sculptural form, she explores its existential and ideological dimensions. Vaikla has been a resident at HISK in Ghent and WIELS in Brussels, and is currently completing her doctoral studies at PXL-MAD/UHasselt. Her works have been shown internationally, including at IDFA, Kunsthalle Wien, EKKM, Bozar, Videonale, and Manifesta 13.

Marge Monko is an artist based in Tallinn, working with photography, video, and installation. Her work engages with historical events and is informed by psychoanalysis, feminist theory, and visual culture studies. Recent projects examine romantic discourse and its manifestations in advertising and commercial design. Monko has participated in the HISK program and artist residencies in New York, Vienna, Hong Kong, and São Paulo. Her works are held in several major collections, including MUMOK, Folkwang Museum, Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, FRAC Lorraine, and the Art Museum of Estonia.

Mart Vainre is an artist living and working in Tallinn. He combines traditional painting techniques with digital tools such as image editing, 3D scanning, and modelling. His works explore the interplay between human and machine-generated visuals, reflecting on the interface between humanity and contemporary technology. Vainre holds a BA in painting and an MA in new media from the Estonian Academy of Arts and has exhibited in solo shows as well as curated exhibitions at KUMU and the Tallinn Art Hall.

John Grzinich (he/him) is an audio-visual artist based in Estonia. His work integrates sound, moving images and site-specific installations to explore perceptions of sound and space, seeking resonances between people and places. Grzinich’s recent focus questions our anthropocentric views through performative and fixed media works by combining earthly agencies, expanded listening practices and participatory engagement.

Léann Herlihy (they/them) is an artist, researcher, and educator based in Dublin. Their practice engages with trans*, queer ecological, feminist, and abolitionist theory, spanning performance, video, sculpture, text, and radical pedagogy. Herlihy critiques normative frameworks of identity, focusing on collective agency and resistance beyond binary categories. They lecture at the National College of Art and Design and are a recipient of multiple Arts Council of Ireland awards. Recent exhibitions include Precarious Joys (Toronto Biennial, 2024), The Salvage Agency (TULCA, 2024), and PLAYING GOD (Innsbruck International, 2026). Herlihy is a studio artist at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios and currently in residence at Fire Station Artists’ Studios.

Eric Otieno Sumba is a writer, editor, and researcher based in Berlin. His work draws on social theory, political economy, postcolonial studies, and art criticism. He is editor for publication practices at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW). Recent editorial projects include Destination Tashkent and Echos der Bruderländer (2024, HKW & Archive Books). As a curator, he co-developed Riverberi (2024) with Spazio Griot at Mattatoio in Rome. His writing has appeared in Contemporary And, Frieze, Camera Austria, Text zur Kunst, The Guardian, and others.

Curated by Bob Bicknell-Knight / isthisit?
Artists: Anastasiia Krapivina, Kroplya, Denis Kudrjasov, Olev Kuma, Bob Bicknell-Knight, Rosa- Maria Nuutinen, Kertu Rannula, Nora Schmelter, Aidan Timmer and Edvard Vellevoog
11 th – 22 nd June
Opening 10 th June, 6-9pm
Uus Rada gallery, Raja tn 11a, 12616 Tallinn, Estonia

The curatorial platform isthisit? is excited to present About The Birds, an exhibition at Uus Rada that explores house sparrows, their ubiquity and resilience, alongside their status as invasive pests. Stemming from an interest in how pervasive and common this species of bird has become, and how they have spread all over the world, About The Birds is an exhibition exploring ideas surrounding the home, transformation and change.
Each artist in the exhibition was provided with a custom-built wooden bird house, made specifically for house sparrows. They were given free reign with what to do with the structure, enabling the artists to produce a new work of art that echoes their ongoing practice whilst asking them to reflect on their own relationship to this common bird.

The exhibition at Uus Rada is the first piece of a three-part curatorial project. Once the exhibition ends the bird houses will be installed in and around Tallinn on different trees and buildings, for the public to visit and discover. The different locations will be accessed via a map published on the isthisit? website. Once installed, the works will be left to live outside in the natural environment, decaying and transforming with time.

The final part of the project will be a book published in late 2025, featuring documentation of the different works, both at Uus Rada and in their locations around the city, as well as a series of short texts reflecting on the project and its themes.
-/-
Bob Bicknell-Knight (b. 1996, Ipswich, UK) is a multidisciplinary artist and curator currently based in Tallinn, Estonia, working with digital media producing films, paintings, sculptures and installations. His practice explores ideas surrounding time, control and degradation, with a particular interest in the underlying mechanics of video game worlds and power structures
that proliferate online and in new forms of technology. Bicknell-Knight is influenced and inspired by our pre-apocalyptic present, climate collapse, virtual worlds and 24/7 hyper- capitalism.

Bicknell-Knight is also the founder and director of isthisit?, a platform for art that’s specialised mainly in digital art since its creation in May 2016, and has worked with hundreds of artists since its inception. Through the platform he curates online and offline exhibitions, hosts an infrequent residency programme and has designed and edited a series of books, focusing on several broad themes from contemporary modes of surveillance to fake news and video game culture.

Poster Font: MAURIZIO by Jaan Pavliuk (2020)

Alyona Movko-Mägi’s solo exhibition Soo is open from June 6 to September 27, 2025, at the Museum of Photography’s Seek gallery, situated in Tornimäe.

The exhibition inaugurates the new season in Estonia’s one-of-a-kind Night Gallery format. During the summer months, the gallery is open Wednesday to Saturday during late evening and nighttime hours: from June to August, 20:00–02:00; in September, 20:00–00:00.

Soo (Estonian for “Bog”) explores the relationship between body and landscape, treating the bog as a layered archive—a place where bodies, stories, and histories accumulate. It is a site of preservation and transformation, where life is held and reshaped. The exhibition invites reflection on the symbolic relationship between embodied presence and terrain, with the bog acting simultaneously as a keeper of memory and a space of change.

At the heart of the exhibition is the female body—as a bearer of life, memory, and belonging. The stratification of bodily experiences—ranging from creation to sacrifice and transformation—intertwines with the landscape, where human traces and narratives blend into visible and invisible layers.

Alyona Movko-Mägi (b. 1984) is an artist whose practice intersects material-based research, expanded photography, and memory embedded in nature. Living and working beside the bogs of Lahemaa in northern Estonia, she gathers and processes materials remembered by the land. Her work weaves together leather, glass, light, photography, motion, and digital forms—bringing forward how time moves through both body and earth, and how care, disappearance, and transformation remain held in matter.

In the artist’s words:
“The bog invites slowness. It gathers silence, light, moisture, and pressure. Movement becomes perception; presence begins to settle in layers. Each pause creates a space for listening—quietly and attentively, without explanation. Photography unfolds here as an embodied act. Light gathers the surface, layering presence. The image does not depict an object, it shapes the conditions for presence and perception, connecting body and space.”

Throughout the summer, the accompanying public program will feature talks on folk heritage, concerts, and workshops on analog photography.

Exhibition Team
Curator: Annika Haas
Sound design: Maksim Adel
Lighting design: Mikk-Mait Kivi
Graphic design: Katariin Mudist
Installation team: Mikk Kivila, Marten Esko, Valge Kuup

Supported by:
The Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA), Department of Glass and Department of Photography.
This exhibition is part of the TASE ’25 graduate festival program.

Night Gallery Opening Hours
• June–August: Wed–Sat, 20:00–02:00
• September: Wed–Sat, 20:00–00:00

The Museum of Photography—located behind Town Hall in a former medieval prison—is part of the Tallinn City Museum and the home of Estonian photographic heritage. In its SEEK gallery, contemporary photography enters dialogue with architectural history.

Here For Six Hours
A hybrid event of exhibition, performance and hanging out

05.06.2025 at 5pm–11pm
Ankru Studio (Ankru 6, Tallinn)
Artists
Anna Ovtšinnikova
Anumai Raska
Bob Bicknell-Knight
Clara Jantson-Köstner
Edvard Vellevoog
Fausta Noreikaite
Keithy Kuuspu
Liisbeth Horn
Mats Johan Soosaar
Nora Schmelter
Olev Kuma

Ricu and Anrku ateljee

On June 5, we invite you to Here for 6 Hours — a six-hour hybrid event that blends the concepts of an exhibition, performance and casual, unrushed hangout. The event begins at 17:00 and ends at 23:00, welcoming those who are curious and interested in the idea of slowing down time. To participate it is necessary to be present for the entire duration of the event, but fresh air breaks are possible on the balcony!

How can you stay in a space for six hours without feeling the need to rush?
Is it possible to look at art for longer than 30 seconds?

The space is filled with works by sixteen artists — installations, paintings, live broadcasts, sound pieces, performances and other interdisciplinary gestures. Some works are activated by the artists, whilst others only require the gaze of the participants.

Within the event being together is the content, reflecting on rapid consumption and hustle culture, capturing and streaming both the meaningful and meaningless moments of idling, live to EKA TV and via influencers’ Instagram feeds. How instagrammable is idling? How instagrammable is simply being present? Does loitering remain loitering when it is documented? Six hours is long enough for the unpredictable to unfold, to let go of all expectations and to settle into a relaxed, and perhaps boring, timeless state.

Curated by: MA Contemporary Art students, EKA

Location: Ankru Studio (Ankru 6, Tallinn)

Date & Time: 05.06.2025 | 17:00–23:00

Free entry, registration needed: https://forms.gle/NxWLLu3iqMsnGJHt9

Vegeterian food and drinks available on site

More info:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kuustundikohal/

EKA TV link: coming soon on facebook event and instagram

Young Narvian Paulina is excited to invite all to the premiere screening of the animated film inspired by real-life stories and her personal memories of her hometown.

Paulina Belik is a graduate of the Estonian Academy of Arts, Animation Department. She was born and raised in Narva — a city that became both the inspiration and the setting for her graduation film From Narva with Love. Paulina is not only the director, but also the narrator and main character of the film, which draws from her personal memories and real-life stories. It is an autobiographical and documentary animation that reflects her deep connection to her hometown and its complex social landscape.

Narva is a border city with a complicated history and many social cracks. It is here that the film’s heroes, street kids, grew up, and their adventures became the foundation for this story. How to find joy in life when you’re surrounded by abandoned buildings, endless slush, and indifferent adults? What to do when social care is just a formality and the street becomes the school of growing up? The film shows Narva through the eyes of those whose childhood unfolded on its streets. This is an honest, slightly dark, but loving and subtly romantic confession from the author to Paulina’s hometown.

An end-of-the-year exhibition by Craft Studies first year MA students showcasing a broad spectrum of material-led practices.

In the first semester of the studies, we discuss at length the difference between objects and things — what makes something an object and another a thing? Wikipedia encourages their editors to be “straightforward, just-the-facts, instead of essay-like, argumentative, or opinionated” when explaining and describing the subject at hand. This exhibition is precisely not that. The works in this exhibition are both, neither and in-between. We encourage you, the visitor, to think about the works you see in essay-like, argumentative and opinionated ways, doubting and departing, considering thingness and objectness as up for discussion.

Object or Things II takes place in the studio of the Craft Studies programme at Kopli 70a, Krulli Kvartal, 2nd floor. The opening is on May 30 at 18:00. Visitors are welcome from 13–19:00 on May 31 and June 1,2,3, or by appointment.

For more information, please get in touch with Marite Kuus marite.kuus@artun.ee

Participants: Sylvia Whananaki Treep Burgess, Lap Chun Chow, Margus Elizarov, Maia Margareta Hellman, Nele Kurvits, Marite Kuus, Lyly Letzer, Peixuan Lin, Mariam Mestvirishvili and Joanne-Heleene Sõrmus.

Curators: Juss Heinsalu and Kärt Ojavee

On May 27 from 15:00 to 19:00, an abstract-form-melodic* expedition will take place in the garden of Ööbiku 19, where life forms, perspectives, and fields converge.

*abstract, formal and melodic

In the garden, things clink and clatter, everyone has their own dance and whistle.

Each with their own character and their own sense of humor.

Some seek shelter from the outside, some seek vastness within the wrap.

Where does the neighbor fly, where does the cable run?

Who owns the field of view

and what crackles in the background?

Root Tooters Ensemble: Ats-Anton-Varustin, Eva Maria Põldmäe, Mia-Stella Aaslaid, Nikola Šmeralová

((It can also be added that:)This is an exhibition by students of the sculpture department, supervised by Laura Põld. If you have any questions, please read the event’s Facebook page, which can be found in the bio of @eka.installation.sculpture or contact us on Instagram.)

Zwaantje Kurpershoek & Indrė Liškauskaitė
“Pastel Paws and Resting Rafts”
EKA Gallery 24.05.–17.06.2025

Guided tour: 23.05.2025 at 5 pm
Opening: 23.05.2025 at 6 pm
Open Tue–Sat 12–6 pm Sun 12–4 pm, free entry
NB! EKA Gallery is closed during Pentecost on June 8!

The exhibition “Pastel Paws and Resting Rafts” is the first joint exhibition by Dutch artist Zwaantje Kurpershoek and Lithuanian artist Indrė Liškauskaitė. Both artists have spatial practice: the work of Zwaantje Kurpershoek comes from an interaction between physical materials and fictional stories resulting in mainly paintings and installations, Indrė Liškauskaitė creates drawings that she weaves with everyday found objects and that occupy the exhibition space in unconventional ways.

The selected works offer a glimpse into the personal relationships the artists have with their four-legged companions. Zwaantje Kurpershoek observes and depicts in her painting series the differences and points of contact between two living beings sharing a living space. How, in passing moments, she becomes close with her cat Nami, then distant once again. Her second work is an installation of pastel colored sculptures — part toy, part survival tool — that guides the viewer through a landscape evoking a mythical, ambiguous feeling of childhood. Indrė Liškauskaitė, who researches dog-human play and train dog agility sport with her non-human companions Delta and Delfina, suspends her four-legged collaborators’ toys and leashes within the exhibition space, also making her drawings go through obstacle course-like physical objects.

Artists: Zwaantje Kurpershoek & Indrė Liškauskaitė
Curator: Kaisa Maasik
Graphic design: Fatima-Ezzahra Khammas
Technical support: Karmo Migur

Exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Erasmus+ Mobility Programme and Sadolin Estonia.
Opening drinks from Põhjala Brewery.

Visit Peru, Sicily, Słubice and more on May 26: Urban studies thesis presentations and defence

Urban Studies students will present and defend their thesis projects on May 26, 10–18 (A501).

This year’s projects explore a real kaleidoscope of places and themes: urban creativity and cooptation in Ljubljana; post-disaster reconstruction in Hatay, Turkey; urban river regulation in Vienna; anti-gentrification movements in Lisbon; an informal market at the Polish-German border; fishermen and urban NGOs vying to shape a Peruvian coastal community; and a housing speculation scheme in Sicily.

Come join us on this journey and support the students—the final review is open to the public.

Follow our channels for further details.

Kata-stroofe / Catastrophes is the group exhibition of the second year painting students of the Estonian Academy of Arts, opening Thursday, 22nd of May in ARS Project Space (Pärnu mnt. 154, Tallinn).

The participating artists are Aleksander Kiigemägi, Alec Hales, Kirke Kits, Marit Loitmets, Liisa Nurklik, Veronika Pavliuk, Elery Sallert, Polina Solovjova.

This exhibition brings together the works of eight different young painters who are connected by a shared studio space, common studies and the era into which they have been born. In addition, the works on display are connected by their format, the starting point of these paintings was a large blank canvas, mostly measuring around 2 x 3 metres in size. Such a surface challenges a painter in various ways, expecting sufficient planning and an ability to keep a freshness throughout the whole process.

Painting big is like running a marathon, with the performer needing to keep the spark until the end, knowing and preparing in advance for the idea and resources to last for a longer time and a wider brushstroke.

The resulting artworks variate between figuration and abstraction, predominantly being poetic and introspective. The artists themselves comment on the following:

Here on the walls we have verses made of frames, canvas, paint and something else in between. We have reached for what appeals to us, haunts, nourishes, questions without giving an answer. What ought to be the answer, instead turns out to be a pair of opposites divided by a slash. Control/trust, something/nothing, serious/absurd, emptiness and fulfillment, individuality and hiding oneself.

The exhibition remains open until the 15th of June, Wed-Sat 12-18, Sun 12-16.

The students were supervised by Sirja-Liisa Eelma, Alice Kask and Holger Loodus.

Graphic design by Pärtel Eelmere, photography by Mikk Keis.

The exhibition is supported by the painting department of the Estonian Academy of Arts, Rott/Rat, Estonian Academy of Arts, Estonian Artists’ Association, ARS Art Factory, Põhjala Brewing AS, Kulinaaria OÜ, Punch Club OÜ.

The exhibition is held by the painting department of the Estonian Academy of Arts and is a part of the Estonian Academy of Arts Grad Show TASE’25 satellite programme.

Contact: sirja-liisa.eelma@artun.ee, holger.loodus@artun.ee

Catastrophes

Hello, dear person – you are so welcome in our space. Here on the walls we have verses made of frames, canvas, paint and something else in between. We have reached for what appeals to us, haunts, nourishes, questions without giving an answer. What ought to be the answer, instead turns out to be a pair of opposites divided by a slash. Control/trust, something/nothing, serious/absurd, emptiness and fulfillment, individuality and hiding oneself.

Should we consider this lack of one certain answer a catastrophe of multitudes? See the absence of one final and definitive confirmation as a failure of the question itself? If we truly believed in that, we would have covered up our stanzas and left this room.

The exhibition’s title comes from a poem of the same name by Artur Alliksaar. In this poem, the following line can be found: “Why won’t you believe in the doors you have not unlocked? Why?!” Thank you, our guest, for taking the step towards our door. We’ll now lead you to more than one window.