Category: Graphic Design

EEE is a graphic design studio based between Bologna and Ravenna (IT) born from the collaborative experience of Emilio Macchia and Erica Preli.

The studio is engaged in a wide range of projects within the field of arts and culture, including publication and book design, brand identities and exhibition design.

EEE gives lectures and holds workshops at universities and other educational institutions, both in Italy and abroad, such as: Fine Art Academy Bologna, Fine Art Academy Macerata and Alma Mater Studiorum Bologna University.

The studio also works on research-based and self-initiated projects; some of the most recents are SUBSTITUTES and Fahrenheit 39 art book fair in Ravenna since 2010.

GD Lecture Series is organized by EKA graphic design department, where various graphic designers are invited to speak about their life and practice.

Graphic designer and DJ Eleonora Šljanda will be visiting on April 4.

Eleonora has studied at both the Estonian Academy of Arts and the Gerrit Rietveld Academy.

The lecture will start at 5 p.m. at Estonian Academy of Arts in room C304.

On Thursday, 16th of March at 19:00, EKA Graphic Design and Product Design second year students open their collective exhibition ‘Randomness, where?’ at ARS Art Factory Studio 53/98.

The exhibition showcases works from more than 20 authors, who explore the theme of randomness and its many forms of expression through personal observations, discovering the beauty of the unpredictable. Can anything be truly random? Is unintended behaviour a human condition differentiating us from algorithms, and what kind of patterns arise when observing unexpected events over time.

Randomness is explored through a vast variety of mediums within the exhibition – such as installation, sculpture, photography, interactive pieces, light installation, sound etc.

The exhibition is open for only three days: 17th until 19th of March, from 13.00-18.00.

Artists: Anette Jaaniso, Beata Batejev, Diana Tammets, Hannah Eliel Allmann, Ilia Rotar, Ines Maria Uudam, Kaisa Uik, Karl-Alder Kuivjõgi, Karl-Egert Kartau, Karolin Eks, Kasper Korsen, Katrin Selin, Ljubov Terukova, Mariann Hendrikson, Marie Soosaar, Mark Uustalu, Markus Laanisto, Nelli Viisimaa, Oliver Udeküll, Pille-Riin Valk, Rasmus Einman, Risto Tepper, Robin Raspel, Ronald Trei

Graphic Design: Nelli Viisimaa, Diana Tammets

Mentor: Sten Saarits

Supported by Estonian Academy of Arts, Estonian Artists’ Association

Follow events at ARS Art Factory: www.arsfactory.ee
(ARS Art Factory is located at Pärnu mnt 154, Tallinn)

Kasia Fudakowski does an artist talk in which she talks about artist talks which she has done in the past, thereby dissecting and examining both her work, and her approach to speaking about her work, while commenting on the unwritten contract between performer and audience. At least, that is very much her intention.

Kasia Fudakowski (b. 1985, London, UK) lives and works in Berlin. She studied at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University, graduating in 2006 before moving to Berlin. Her diverse and playful practice, which includes sculpture, film, performance, and writing, explores social riddles through material encounters, surreal logic and comic theory. Her ever-expanding, life-long sculpture Continuouslessness, (2017–ongoing), employs a fixed modular system of connecting panels to allow for complete sculptural freedom within its rigid framework, and is intended to reach completion only in the event of the artist’s death. Often referring to the allure and danger of binary categorization and the subsequent absurdity that it unfolds in our political and social climate, her work reveals the discrepancies amongst cultural norms.

Her interest in the limitations of language is explored through her ongoing film series Word Count, (2016–ongoing) which takes as its premise a globally limiting law on the amount of permitted spoken words. Where she employs comic mechanisms, the tragic is never far behind, so that her work often hovers between the horrific and the comic. Frequently the target of her own attacks, she explores her own role as an artist and the stereotype thereof with both a seriousness and irreverence typical of her approach. Her long-term infatuation with failure, and redefining success, has resulted in a number of tragi-comic performances and pieces of writing.
kasiakasia.com

The talk will be in English. Kasia Fudakowski is in EKA to give a workshop to the Contemporary Art MA students and have tutorials with students from Graphic Design MA.

On Tuesday, March 14 at 17.30, Amsterdam-based artist Riet Wijnen will speak about her current research into the life and practice of painter and sculptor Saloua Raouda Choucair (1916–2017), one of the first abstract artists in Lebanon.

Choucair’s interests included genetic science, the infinite, the Arabic poetry form Qasida and Sufi philosophy. According to her, the Islamic rejection of the pictorial image led to the essential search for what one wanted to express, and was for her a fundamental way to understand Arabic intellectual thinking which she translated a.o. into abstract sculptures and paintings.

Wijnen visited the estate in Choucair’s last apartment in the Qatari neighbourhood in Beirut. There she was confronted by a large amount of works, photos and documents in French and Arabic, languages she does not speak, write nor read. This visit led to her development of non-linguistic research methods, an inquiry into how one might “speak nearby”* and position themselves in the work. Wijnen will share works and tools currently in development: a publication, sculptural dinnerware and a series of fermentation pots. These works will also feed into a fictional conversation with Choucair, which is part of a long term cycle, since 2015, titled Sixteen Conversations on Abstraction.
*Trinh T. Minh–ha

Riet Wijnen (b. 1988, Venray, NL, lives in Amsterdam) is an artist whose practice involves sculpture, photograms, text, woodcuts and more recently type design. She is interested in incomplete histories of abstraction, what and who are already registered in history, along with the known and unknown ways of making history. To do this, she looks to elders, and in her work hosts practitioners from the past and present who have been active in the field of art during early modernism, or in science, philosophy, education and activism. She brings the practitioners together in fictional conversations and sculptures to reconsider histories and better understand what comes next. Wijnen uses perception, language and organisational structures.

This research comes together in the cycle Sixteen Conversations on Abstraction (2015) and publications related to language and biographies of female identifying modernists that provide sources for Wijnen’s practice while functioning independently. Publications include: Saloua Raouda Choucair (2023), Homophone Dictionary (2019), Grace Crowley (2019), Abstraction Création: Art non-figuratif (reprint and translation) (2014) and Marlow Moss (2013).

Wijnen has had solo exhibitions at venues including Kunstverein Milano (2022), Manifold Books, Amsterdam (2019); Lumen Travo, Amsterdam (2018); P/////AKT, Amsterdam (2016) and Dolores, Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam (2015). She was a resident at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten (2017–18), the Van Doesburg Huis in Paris (2022), EKWC in Oisterwijk, NL (2023) and has participated in groups shows at, among others, SculptureCenter, New York; 21st Biennale of Sydney; John Hansard Gallery, Southampton; The Center for Contemporary Art & Culture at PNCA, Portland; Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, Utrecht; and Index – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm. Wijnen teaches in the Graphic Design and TXT department of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam.
rietwijnen.nl

The lecture is in English. Riet Wijnen is in EKA to have tutorials with students from Contemporary Art MA and Graphic Design MA programs.

Graphic design 3rd year BA students invite everyone to the opening of their exhibition I Will Always Remember… on Tuesday, 6 December at 5 p.m. 

The exhibition presents artworks that combine artificial and natural materials, resulting in a whole new world. Despite the wide spectrum of topics and personal points of departure, on closer inspection, the works have quite a bit in common.

Works are by Aleksander Alev, Elisabeth Järve, Emma Reim, Erik Merisalu, Karl Kevad, Katariina Kesküla, Katrin Kannu, Kaur Joonas Karu, Kertu Klementi, Csenge Kinga Kovács, Magnus Harjak, Steven Pikas.

The exhibition was created in the framework of a course supervised by Kaspar Sellin.

The exhibition is open on two days:
Tuesday, 6 December, 5–10 p.m.
Thursday, 8 December, 3–10 p.m.

Address: Tulika põik 4a, Tallinn

Find the Facebook event here. For more information, email sellin.kaspar@gmail.com

On Wednesday, 26 October at 17:30, designer Linda van Deursen holds an open lecture at the EKA auditorium (A101).

Linda van Deursen is a graphic designer who works and lives in The Netherlands. Together with Armand Mevis she founded Mevis & van Deursen in 1987. Since then they have worked for cultural institutions such as Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, documenta 14, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, and have collaborated with artists on publications and exhibitions, such as Armin Linke, Yael Davids, and Aglaia Konrad.

Since 1990 she has taught graphic design at various institutions such as the Gerrit Rietveld Academie Amsterdam (where she also served as head of the graphic design department), Yale School of Art in New Haven and currently NLN at the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague.

The talk is held in English.

DEAR FRIEND
15–29 September 2022
Opening. 15.09 at 6 pm
EKA Gallery, Estonian Academy of Arts

Dear Friend,

We have been thinking about you and we are looking forward to meeting you at the Dear Friend exhibition from 15–29 September 2022 at EKA Gallery. We hope you have time to pass by! The gallery doors open on 15 September at 18:00. 

Since 2019 we have been writing, folding, publishing, sharing and posting the Dear Friend publication. There are four seasons of published letters. This Fall seemed like the right time to meet after a few years of correspondence. It is a chance to talk about publishing, writing, small publications, doing things together, and why not just about how we are doing. 

The exhibition features all the published Dear Friend letters. The letters are available for you to read, take home or mail to another friend. Next to the letters there are projects and publications by our penfriends. These are mostly publications that connect with the Dear Friend project contextually, formally, community-wise and beyond borders. 

There is also a public programme that includes presentations of periodical publications and books; from 20–23 September readings and recordings of letters, programme Tracks as envelopes by oH radio; 24 September Dear Friend symposium, a day full of presentations and discussions; 29 September Dear Friend letter writing workshop and more. 

A catalogue will be published alongside the exhibition, with contributions by Singapore-based design writer Justin Zhuang, designer and writer Else Lagerspetz, and artist Lieven Lahaye. It will include published letters and a selection of photos of the activities. The book launch will take place at the symposium on 24 September. 

PUBLIC PROGRAM

16–29 September, EKA Gallery

16.09 17:00 artist Lieven Lahaye presents a new issue of Catalog

20.09–23.09 11:00–13:00 & 14:00–16:00 oH radio’s Tracks as envelopes, public readings of Dear Friend letters in the exhibition space. Come read one! 

22.09 18:00 presentation of Exercises in Practical Mischievery by Laura Pappa, Carlo Canun, Maki Suzuki

24.09 12:00–17:00 Dear Friend symposium and catalogue presentation. Come and join!

28.09 18:30 launch of the All Horses Are the Same Colour by EKA GD MA students 

29.09 18:00 Dear Friend letter writing workshop. Please join! 

SYMPOSIUM

24 September 12:00–18:00, EKA Gallery

Dear Friend symposium is a gathering where we explore practices and questions around experimental and self-publishing, mailing as a form of publishing, and design as writing through presentations and discussions. 

Symposium is held in English. 

12:00 Gathering

12:30 Presentation Undisclosed Relations, Henk Groenendijk 

Henk Groenendijk travels from Sofia, Bulgaria to open some boxes full of student publications, a selection of works from the Test Press exhibition, and copies of Test Press magazine. Henk will tell us about his library and collection of student publications and the links that are perhaps not visible. The connections are in the books, posters, and other paraphernalia. 

Heni Groenendijk is a collector, educator, and curator of Test Press Books. He worked as a professor at the Graphic Design Department of Gerrit Rietveld Academie and initiated the Rietveld & Sandberg Library Publications Archive. 

13:00 “A Lecture on Nothing: on the Legibility of Illegible Text”, Arja Karhumaa

What do typographic texts consist of? How does typography relate to language, image, and writing? How do you read illegible text? What is type beyond only form, as part of our coexistence and social environment? This performative talk has no answers to these questions but aims to stay with the trouble they make.

Arja Karhumaa is a text designer, a feral academic, and a language animal. She is Assistant Professor and Head of Programme in Visual Communication Design at Aalto University ARTS, Finland. 

13:30 open discussion

14:00–15:00 break/lunch

15:00 Presentation about de Appel’s publication The Remote Archivist, Nell Donkers

Nell Donkers, archivist of de Appel in Amsterdam will talk about The Remote Archivist, a recurring (one-page folded poster) publication from the Archive. There are four series of the publication that have been presented so far. The aim is to invite artists, thinkers, and readers to dive deeper into the archive and recalibrate the archive materials for their own practice. Bardhi Haliti is the designer of the project and of de Appel’s house style. 

Nell Donkers has managed the archive (library, archive, and collection) of De Appel in Amsterdam since 2002 and made it digitally accessible. 

15:30 Talk about Queer.Archive.Work and the resting reader, Paul Soulellis

Paul Soulellis’ talk will present his work at the nonprofit library, publishing studio, and residency Queer.Archive.Work in Providence, US with a focus on collectivity in the context of independent publishing. The resting reader is a book of texts and images assembled from source material found on the shelves of the Queer.Archive.Work library. The content was selected during the rise of the COVID-19 Omicron variant in December 2021, around the loose themes of rest, quiet, care, queer, sanctuary, reflection, collective, and generosity. 

Paul Soulellis is an artist and educator based in Providence, RI. His practice includes teaching, writing, and experimental publishing, with a focus on queer methodologies and network culture. 

16:00 open discussion

17:00 presentation of the Dear Friend catalogue, Ott Kagovere and Sandra Nuut

Ott Kagovere is a Tallinn-based graphic designer and the Head of the Department of Graphic Design at the Estonian Academy of Arts. 

Sandra Nuut is a curator at the Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design. Previously she worked at the Estonian Academy of Arts and New York-based gallery Chamber. 

Exhibition concept/curation: 

Ott Kagovere & Sandra Nuut

Exhibition design

Ulla Alla & Nika Gabiskiria

Letters by
Alicia Ajayi, Stuart Bertolotti-Bailey, Claudia Doms, Nell Donkers, Maarin Ektermann, Rosen Eveleigh, Maryam Fanni, Saara Hannus, Eik Hermann, Paul John, Maria Juur, Ott Kagovere, Maarja Kangro, Arja Karhumaa, Kristina Ketola Bore, Nicole Killian, Rachel Kinbar, Tuomas Kortteinen, Keiu Krikmann, Kadri Laas, Else Lagerspetz, Lieven Lahaye, James Langdon, Jungmyung Lee, Kai Lobjakas, Michelle Millar Fisher, Maria Muuk, Sheere Ng, Sandra Nuut, Laura Pappa, Jack Self, Indrek Sirkel, Paul Soulellis, Triin Tamm, Laura Toots, Alice Twemlow, Loore Viires, Sean Yendrys, Justin Zhuang

Letter visuals by 

Mai Bauvald, Pärtel Eelmere, Martina Gofman, Kersti Heile, Laura Merendi, Mikk Oja, Rex, Johanna Ruukholm, Robin Siimann

Thank you

Andres Alliksaar, Louis Biasin, Rita Davis, Pärtel Eelmere, Maarin Ektermann, Mark Foss, Triin Jerlei, Mette Mari Kaljas, Kaur Karu, Kertu Klementi, Else Lagerspetz, Rasmus Lukas, Laura Merendi, Anete Ots, Laura Pappa, Steven Pikas, Lola Maria Pärna, Emma Reim, Filipp Rotšenkov, Maret Sarapu, Georg Ander Sild, Indrek Sirkel, Mariliis Tarja, Ljubov Terukova, Taylor Tex Tehan, Laura Tursk, Pille-Riin Valk 

Detailed program: facebook.com/events/440404928139944/440701844776919

Dear Friend web archive: https://gd.artun.ee/dearfriend/ 

Supported by Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Academy of Arts, European Regional Development Fund

See you soon!

Sandra & Ott

Silence After Early Hours
(first-ever) EKA GD MA Graduation Show
4–11 June 2022, 1–7pm

Do you know the feeling? The feeling you have after leaving a long and eventful party minutes after the sunrise? The feeling of sneaking to the door past drunken animals and sleeping unfortunates, the feeling of smoke-filled air and a sticky floor that by now looks almost glazed in a varnish of liquor. The feeling of opening the doors and getting slammed in the face by a blinding ray of sunshine, the feeling of the first lungful breath you take, and being almost surprised the air can smell so good. the feeling of guilt as you stumble and hobble, shuffle, and dodder your way home as others have just woken up and are in a fast-paced manner gracefully heading to work? That’s now, we are leaving and returning to the places and lives we left behind. An exhausting end before a new beginning or the silence after early hours.

Vernissage: June 3, 6:30–9 pm
Finissage: June 11, 9 pm–midnight

Class of 2022
Alejandro Bellón Ample, Louise Borinski, Aleksandrs Breže, Paula Buškevica, Björn Giesecke, Otso Peräsaari, Diandra Rebase, Katarina Sarap

Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn
MA in Graphic Design