From 12 to 16 August, the Estonian pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale, The House of Leaking Sky by Merike Estna is hosting The School of Strange Weather. The School of Strange Weather is a series of experimental interventions by students of Contemporary Art MA from the Estonian Academy of Arts, where Estna has been a professor since August 2025.
Merike Estna offers the pavilion as an open-ended platform for the students to present their performative projects. The School of Strange Weather constitutes an important layer in the life cycle of the pavilion, which Estna is presenting as a live process. It also relates to her long-time practice of hosting a variety of artists and events in the space she creates with her paintings. During The School of Strange Weather, Estna will not be painting at the pavilion, however, the space remains open to visitors and her large-scale canvases, the tiled floor and benches can be viewed.
The young artists from the Estonian Academy of Arts choreograph works ranging from daily acts of care for one another as well as the space they have been invited to inhabit as guests to longer durational movement pieces, unfolding both inside and outside the decommissioned church, now serving as both a community centre and an art pavilion. The artists take this as an opportunity to reflect on their histories and shared environment, alongside more intimate personal stories and experiences that invite connection and reflection from the visitors attending these events. The works explore subjects ranging from anxieties surrounding art, time, industrialization, and change to the challenges and possibilities of communicating across barriers within the global context of the Venice Biennale.
Participants: Bob Bicknell-Knight, Daria Morozova, Denis Kudrjašov, Hanna Vinter, Irmak Semiz, Kertu-Liisa Sarap, Lili Maud Dobell & Éric-Olivier Thériault, Lotta Karoliina Räsänen, Marc Léger Sauvageot, Maria Wrang-Rasmussen, Nora Schmelter, Ronja Aurora Siitonen, Rosa-Maria Nuutinen, Rover Indigo Bertels-Andréa, Sander Karjus, Suvi Päll and Yiyang Sun
Supervisors: Merike Estna and Karel Koplimets
Supporters: Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Academy of Arts, Estonian Centre for Contemporary Art
The Estonian Centre for Contemporary Art is the official representative of the Estonian exposition. The project is funded by the Estonian Ministry of Culture.
The Estonian pavilion is located at Calle San Domenico 1285, Venice.
Opening hours:
- Tuesday–Sunday
- May–Sep 11–19
- Oct–Nov 10–18