Calendar

04.07-26.07 @ Keskpuur

The opening of LMEO artist duo’s first international exhibition will take place on July 4 at 13:00.
Drinks for the opening will be provided by Tuletorn & Vaat.

Keskpuur is pleased to announce Everything is Just Something to Get Through – the first international exhibition by the artist duo LMEO. Originally from Montréal and now based in Tallinn, LMEO brings together their individual practices through a collaborative approach rooted in sculpture, installation, and performance.

As temporary residents in Estonia, the artists have developed the exhibition through the observant gaze of newcomers. This exhibition challenges concepts of spectatorship and its relation to urban systems, drawing attention to the ways public infrastructures can function [or can be understood] as choreography.

The exhibition evokes a feeling of displacement or loneliness that blends into the anonymity of public space. Through flickering lights, industrial assemblages, and images of the mundane, Everything is Just Something to Get Through reflects on the banal structures that shape contemporary life and reimagines them as theatrical settings. LMEO invites viewers to encounter these environments with the heightened awareness of a visitor or outsider, while considering how spiritual presence and emotional connection might inhabit ordinary spaces as a means of communicating across distance and coping with grief and loss.

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Lili Maud Dobell and Éric-Olivier Thériault have worked collaboratively since October 2022, after meeting while completing their BFAs at NSCAD University. After establishing an alternative gallery space in Halifax, Canada, the artists moved to Estonia to pursue graduate studies at the Estonian Academy of Arts in the Contemporary Art MA programme. The pair uses collaboration as a meeting ground for a shared artistic vision, resisting singular authorship.

The acronym LMEO stands for “Laughing My Ears Off” while also referencing the initials of their first names.

Both artists specialize in sculptural practices that invite or consider bodily interaction with materials. Their collaborative practice speaks in a tone they describe as “pathetic poetry”. Through their durational works, they coined the term Proof of Performance to describe the sculptural act of making through being.

Central to the pair’s joint practice is the gathering and assemblage of found objects, reflecting a commitment to a sustainable artistic language that considers the relevance and utility of the readymade within a context of climate and socio-political crisis. As a result, the seemingly mundane spaces where the reflection and the non-doing aspects of a sculptural practice are activated become the subject for the artwork itself.

Lili Maud and Éric-Olivier are currently developing Cycles, a performance piece that will be shown at the 61st Venice Biennale under the pavilion umbrella of Merike Estna’s House of Leaking Sky.

Lisette Lepik’s solo exhibition Flow State will open on 7th of July at 18:00 at Artovert Gallery.

7.07 – 7.08.2026

Tue – Sat 12:00 – 18:00, Sun – Mon closed
Exhibition opening on Tuesday 7th of July at 18:00.

Artrovert Gallery, Ristiku tn 10, 10612 Tallinn

Lisette Lepik’s solo exhibition Flow State focuses on the dialogue between painting as a non-linear medium and dance as a medium unfolding in time. The exhibition is guided by the question: how can movement that disappears in time be transformed into an image, and can painting convey the experience of movement?

Painting has traditionally been understood as a static, two-dimensional medium. Dance, by contrast, emerges through movement and duration. While the two mediums engage with time in different ways, both are shaped by gesture and bodily action. Movement in dance is experienced through time, whereas painting appears to suspend time, preserving traces of a process that has already passed.

Within both processes, there are moments when attention becomes fully absorbed in the act itself. As movement unfolds, awareness of the surrounding environment fades and the distinction between intention and action becomes less pronounced. Flow State draws on this shared condition, exploring how the fleeting presence of movement can leave traces that persist beyond the moment of its occurrence.

Flow State extends beyond the boundaries of painting into a carefully constructed spatial environment. Sound, light, and exhibition architecture become active participants in the work, gradually dissolving distinctions between image and atmosphere, observation and immersion. Together, these elements create a space where the exhibition’s central questions are experienced as much through the viewer’s movement and perception as through the paintings themselves.

Lisette Lepik (b. 1999, Tallinn, EE) is an artist working primarily with painting and installation. Her practice examines the body as a site where intimacy, memory, family structures, and social roles intersect. 

Lepik is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Contemporary Art at the Estonian Academy of Arts, where she completed a Bachelor’s degree in Painting in 2022, and studied installation and sculpture at the Iceland University of the Arts in 2019. She has exhibited in Estonia, Iceland, Austria, and Lithuania, including duo exhibitions with Brenda Purtsak at Tartu Art House and Hobusepea Gallery (2024), and a collaborative exhibition with Kristina Kuzemko at Club Virgin, a strip club in Tallinn (2025). Her most recent solo exhibition took place at Haapsalu City Gallery (2025). She received the Estonian Academy of Arts’ “Õpi ja sära” scholarship in 2024 and the Helju Rossmann Scholarship in 2025.

Open: 7.07 – 7.08.2026

Tue – Sat 12:00 – 18:00, Sun – Mon closed

Artrovert Gallery, Ristiku tn 10, 10612 Tallinn

Curator: Nora Schmelter

Sound: Gregor Sirendi

Graphic Design: Villem Sarapuu

Technical Support: Siim Raie, Nora Schmelter, Mats Johan Soosaar

Special Thanks: Artrovert Gallery, Estonian Cultural Endowment, Estonian Academy of Arts Department of New Media, Punch Club, Bob Bicknell-Knight, Gerda Hansen, Mats Johan Soosaar

April 24 – August 15, 2026
Opening April 23 at 6pm

Announcing the opening of ‘Ersatz Strata’, a joint exhibition by Zody Burke (Tallinn, NYC, EKA MACA) and Klara Zetterholm (Stockholm) at Temnikova & Kasela gallery. 

The work is an exploration of a recently discovered imagined anthropological site of questionable provenance. Through reliefs, sculptures, printed work, kinetic elements, and industrial residue, the artists present an unreliable aesthetic archaeology in the language of natural history museums.

The exhibition includes a short story written by Jaakko Pallasvuo (a.k.a. Avocado Ibuprofen) with design by Taylor Tex Tehan (EKA GDMA).

The opening will include a live performance by musician and digital-age cosmogonist 011668 (Los Angeles), whose interdisciplinary work blends spirituality, consumption, and fossil fuel mythologies. The performance will occur just before twilight.

The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

29.05–16.08.2026
Maria Kapajeva. I Am A Border
Curator: Siim Preiman, Exhibition designer: Anu Vahtra

Estonian artist Maria Kapajeva will open her largest solo exhibition to date at the Tallinn Art Hall’s Lasnamäe Pavilion on 28 May at 6 pm. Titled I Am a Border, the exhibition brings together 16 works created between 2014 and 2026, many of them produced specifically for this show. Admission is free.

The exhibition is the culmination of more than a decade of artistic research into the border as a geographical, bodily, and emotional phenomenon.

Its point of departure is the region beyond Narva, Narvataguse – the former homeland of the artist’s paternal family, now located within the Russian border zone and inaccessible to the family today. Through photographs, video works, installations, and textiles, Kapajeva approaches borderliness not as a fixed place, but as a continuous state of transition – never fully one thing, never fully becoming the other.

The works intertwine the Narva River, the post-operative body, family archives, a disappearing language, and disrupted connections to landscape and heritage. One of the exhibition’s central works, Four Generations Later, features the artist’s relatives reading dialect texts from the Narvataguse region recorded in 1947 – a language that has become partly incomprehensible even to younger Russian-speaking generations.
The installations incorporate materials such as maps from the family archive, diary entries by Kapajeva’s father, a family tree drawn by a geneticist, and a blanket that once belonged to the artist’s grandmother. Several works also explore the fluidity of the body and identity, connecting queer perspectives with ecology and border landscapes.

“What moves me in Maria Kapajeva’s work is her ability to speak about identity without simplifying it. Her works hold vulnerability, the weight of history, and a deeply personal clarity all at once,” said the exhibition’s curator Siim Preiman. “Every day I see how nationalism is often something that divides rather than unites us.”

The exhibition is accompanied by a diverse public programme:

• 30 May at 2 pm – curator’s tour with Siim Preiman
• 17 June at 5 pm – artist’s tour with Maria Kapajeva
• In July, Maria Kapajeva and Anton Küünal will host a joint event exploring the intersections of plants, ecology, and queer perspectives (date to be confirmed)
• 9 August – a collective textile workshop titled Queering and Sewing Together
• On the exhibition’s final day, 16 August, there will be an artist’s tour followed by a communal cooking event in the Korr-korr (Borborygmus) series, where the exhibition team and visitors will prepare and share food together.

Maria Kapajeva is an artist whose work explores questions of identity and gender, with a particular focus on in-between and transitional states. Her works are included in several museum collections, including the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art and the Tartu Art Museum. She is currently pursuing doctoral studies at the Estonian Academy of Arts and is one of the recipients of the Estonian state artist’s salary.

Ronja Siitonen, Maria Wrang-Rasmussen, Martina Zito
“Charge, Jaw, Babble, Faucet”
EKA Gallery 4.07.–16.08.2026 (NB! Closed during 20.07.–2.08.)
Open Tue–Sat 12–6 pm Sun 12–4 pm
Opening: Friday, July 3 at 6 pm

The exhibition “Charge, Jaw, Babble, Faucet” expands through the magical, gray areas of active incoherence, wielding gibberish as both shield and tool to explore alternative logics of language. Here, communication extends beyond words into expanded forms and hidden meanings. Gibberish, as a private space of understanding, offers a playground for hide-and-seek between language and body, humour and mystery.

Working across video, installation, sculpture, and jelly painting, the exhibition brings together artworks by Ronja Siitonen, Maria Wrang-Rasmussen, and Martina Zito. Here, modern-day spells take shape as rhythmical languages in translation. Alchemical transformations simmer as teeth are scratched and paws wait patiently; skin wrinkles and stretches into a sweet tension; the trapeze pendulum hangs poised, ready for a push.

Graphic design: Simon Janson
Technical support: Ats Kruusing
The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia and Sadolin Estonia.
Opening drinks from mirai™.

Sonya Isupova
“Water Usually in the Shape of a River. Hydroelectric Imaginaries of the Southern Ukrainian Landscape”
EKA Gallery 4.07.–16.08.2026 (NB! Closed during 20.07.–2.08.)
Open Tue–Sat 12–6 pm Sun 12–4 pm
Opening: Friday, July 3 at 6 pm

“Water Usually in the Shape of a River” is the first solo exhibition by Ukrainian artist and researcher Sonya Isupova. The exhibition explores Soviet infrastructural projects and their modes of representation, focusing on the hydroelectric dams built along the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine, particularly the Kakhovka and Dnipro hydroelectric stations. Through film and archival research, Isupova examines how these projects reshaped both landscape and collective memory.

The exhibition forms part of her doctoral research on the effects of colonial infrastructure on the landscape. She approaches Soviet films about infrastructure as “imaginary maps” that helped construct a unified Soviet space while simultaneously preserving visual records of territories before their transformation. Through these films, it becomes possible to trace the beginnings of ruination and reconstruct fragmented memories of landscapes submerged beneath the man-made seas of the Kakhovka and Dnipro reservoirs.

Positioned between monumentality and utility, Soviet hydroelectric projects generated a distinct visual language that presented nature as transformed by political power. Through archival artefacts and speculative reconstruction, the exhibition revisits these submerged landscapes and the histories embedded within them.

Graphic design: Simon Janson
Technical support: Ats Kruusing
The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia and Sadolin Estonia.
Opening drinks from mirai™.

Opening on Thursday, 21 May at 6 pm in the Great Hall of the Kumu Art Museum
(Weizenbergi 34 / Valge 1, Tallinn).
 
Chromatic Drift creates a cohesive perceptual and spatial experience centred on colour, a defining element in the oeuvre of the Estonian painter Kristi Kongi. Works created specifically for this exhibition over the past couple of years, together with the surrounding installation-based environment, evoke both chromatic richness and a poetic mode of being in unmapped territory.
 
At the opening, the launch of the book accompanying the exhibition will also take place.
 
The opening will take place in Kumu’s courtyard, weather permitting.
 
Opening programme on Saturday, 23 May:

Exhibition tours with curator Ann Mirjam Vaikla and artist Kristi Kongi: 12 noon (in English) and 2 pm (in Estonian)
Artist talk with Kristi Kongi at 3:30 pm

The exhibition will remain open until 11 October 2026.

Curator: Ann Mirjam Vaikla
Exhibition design: Mari Hunt, Grete Daut (MARIHUNT architects)
Graphic design: Brit Pavelson
Exhibition installation manager: Tõnis Medri
Coordinator: Anastassia Langinen

On 14 August, from 13:00 to 14:30 (EEST), the public peer review of Art and Design doctoral student Sofia Isupova’s first solo exhibition, “Water, Usually in the Shape of a River,” will take place in EKA Gallery on the second floor.
Water, Usually in the Shape of a River folds in itself infrastructures, shapes perceptions, and registers transformations. A river exists simultaneously as a border, a defence mechanism, and a source of both life and death. Its water can become a resource, a weapon, or a memorial. The exhibition investigates Soviet infrastructural projects and their modes of representation, focusing on hydroelectric dams built along the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine, particularly the Kakhovka and Dnipro hydroelectric stations. Through film and archival research, juxtaposed with media art installation, Isupova examines how these projects reshaped both landscape and collective memory.
The exhibition forms part of her doctoral research on the effects of colonial infrastructure on the landscape.
At the centre of the exhibition is the essay film Water, Usually in the Shape of a River, which functions as a visual map of a memory of a landscape that is no longer there.

Reviewers: Dr. Raivo Kelomees (EKA) and Prof. Madina Tlostanova (Linkoping University, Sweden)

Supervisors: Dr. Epp Annus, Dr. Varvara Guljajeva

At the seminar, we will introduce Met(s)aRING, a joint research and development project by EKA PAKK (Estonian Academy of Arts) and RMK (State Forest Management Centre), which aims to develop a circular and modular construction system for RMK’s visitor infrastructure, including small-scale structures and cabins.

The project explores how infrastructure can be designed to be adaptable, upgradable, and reusable over time. The focus is on recurring standardized timber components, the use of production residues, and solutions that reduce material consumption, simplify maintenance, and extend the lifespan of structures.

The aim of the seminar is to gather practical feedback from builders and manufacturers on the applicability of the system currently under development. We will discuss how standardized or flexible a construction system should be, the opportunities for using reclaimed or lower-grade timber, and how procurement models and collaboration frameworks influence the implementation of sustainable solutions.

You can register for the event HERE!

PROGRAMME

27 August 2026, 9:30–12:30
EKA White Building (Kotzebue 10, Tallinn)

9:30 Introduction to the ongoing research project, RMK’s long-term goals and ambitions (RMK)

9:45 Eight Design Principles for Visitor Infrastructure Design (EKA)

10:00 Introduction to the Construction System (EKA)

10:15 The Use of Underutilized and Lower-Value Timber in Construction (TalTech)

10:30 Coffee Break and Introduction to the Construction System Prototype

11:00–12:30 Workshop

Research at EKA PAKK is co-funded by the European Union and the Estonian Research Council through the project “PUUSTER: Development of Methods for Valorising Underutilized Timber and Wood Materials in Construction” (TEM-TA80).

This event is part of the Adapter Network Collaboration Club Series, a platform where researchers, companies, and representatives of the public and private sectors come together to engage in meaningful discussions and explore opportunities for collaboration. You can find all Adapter Collaboration Clubs here.

EKA Arh Conference 2026 is titled To Be Continued….From Scattered Facts to Shared Concerns, and takes place as Day 1 of the two-day Tallinn Architecture Biennial TAB Symposium.

Tickets for the EKA Architecture Conference and the entire TAB Symposium — available at an early-bird price until 31 July — can be purchased on Fienta.

The 2026 EKA Arh Conference focuses on one of the central questions facing architecture and urban development today: how do we move forward when starting from scratch is no longer a viable option? While knowledge about climate transition, resource limits, and the built environment is abundant, translating that knowledge into collective action remains a challenge. Rather than asking only what comes next, the conference asks what can and should continue.

Across urban, building, and material scales, international speakers and researchers explore adaptation, reuse, and transformation in the built environment. The programme brings together perspectives from architecture, planning, construction, and research to discuss how existing places, buildings, and resources can support meaningful change, and how scattered knowledge can become shared concerns capable of shaping long-term action.

Programme

09:30–09:45
Opening Words

09:45–10:30
Transformation Keynote
Aleksi Neuvonen (Demos Helsinki, Finland)
Finnish futures thinker and co-founder of Demos Helsinki, whose work explores societal transformation, post-growth futures, and new models of collective action.

10:30–10:45
Coffee Break

10:45–12:15 | Parallel Sessions

Main Hall – Session I: Spatial and Architectural Transformation

This session explores processes of spatial transformation across urban and architectural scales, examining how cities, landscapes, and built environments adapt to changing social, ecological, and cultural conditions. Contributions address themes such as urban restructuring, adaptive reuse, spatial continuity, and the relationship between territorial systems, public space, and architectural intervention.

Monumental studio – Session I: Prefabrication, Retrofit, and Adaptive Reuse

This session examines prefabricated and industrialized approaches to the transformation of existing buildings and urban fabric. Contributions explore themes such as adaptive reuse, modular retrofit systems, circular renovation strategies, and the extension of building lifecycles, addressing how contemporary construction methods can support more sustainable and resource-conscious forms of spatial transformation.

12:15–13:15
Lunch

13:15–14:00
Adaptation Keynote
Hiroto Kobayashi (Keio University, Tokyo, Japan)

Japanese architect, professor at Keio University, and founder of Kobayashi Maki Design Workshop, known for his work on adaptive reuse, post-disaster reconstruction, and resource-conscious architecture.

14:00–14:15
Coffee Break

14:15–15:45 | Parallel Sessions

Main Hall – Session II: Material Systems and Circular Construction

This session focuses on material systems, construction processes, and circular approaches to the built environment. Contributions examine themes such as material reuse, prefabrication, tectonics, fabrication methods, and resource-aware design strategies, addressing how construction systems can support more adaptive and sustainable spatial practices.

Monumental studio – Parallel Session II: Participatory Planning and Urban Transformation

This session explores participatory approaches to urban transformation through digital mapping, GIS-based spatial analysis, and collaborative planning tools. Contributions address themes such as tactical urban interventions, community engagement, and urban greening strategies, examining how localized actions and participatory processes can inform broader spatial and policy frameworks and vice versa.

15:45–16:00
Coffee Break

16:00–16:45
Panel Discussion

16:45–17:00
Closing Words

The EKA Institute of Art History and Visual Culture is part of the Visual Arts in Europe: An Open History (EVA) project that brings together more than 150 art and heritage historians representing the 46 member countries of the Council of Europe. The project is led by an Editorial Board, composed of six European specialists, and supported by the International Association of Research Institutes in the History of Art (RIHA). Its scientific and operational coordination is provided by the Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA) in Paris.

Launched in 2019, this scientific and editorial project results in the publication of a digital platform, documenting the history of the visual arts on the European continent, from prehistory to the present day. This platform will be structured around a collection of 475 objects and images, selected in consultation with all of its institutional partners. It is developed within the framework of an international dialogue, remaining attentive to the plurality and richness of scholarly traditions, accessible to all audiences, and providing an account of current research in the discipline of art history.

This seminar will examine the principles that inspired the launch of this project, the methodology used both for the selection of objects and the attribution of associated texts, as well as the challenges encountered during the development of the digital platform. The presentation of the project and platform prototype will be followed by an open discussion with colleagues from the EKA Institute of Art History and Visual Culture, host of this seminar and Estonian project partner. With INHA director Anne-Solène Rolland and project coordinator Margot Sanitas present, the seminar will be an opportunity for all the Estonian representatives to share their reflections on the selection of objects and how the project contributes to reshaping our common history of European visual culture.

When you think of the Nordic and Baltic regions, your first associations might be trolls and Vikings, the midnight sun and polar nights, saunas and ice swimming, hygge and fika, Nokia and IKEA. Maybe you have also heard about their excellent school systems and strong social welfare models. But what is behind these myths? 16 comic artists from across the Nordics and Baltics created works that reflect their unique perspectives on life in the region.

Participating artists: Akvile Magicdusté (Lithuania), Cecilia Vårhed (Sweden), Clara Jetsmark (Denmark), Disa Wallander (Sweden), Elín Elísabet (Iceland), Emmi Valve (Finland), Ida Neverdahl (Norway), Joonas Sildre (Estonia), Jurijs Tatarkins (Latvia), Laura Ķeniņš (Canada), Liisa Kruusmägi (Estonia), Mari Ahokoivu (Finland), Ona Kvašytė (Lithuania), Søren Glosimodt Mosdal (Denmark), Tim Ng Tvedt (Norway), Tommi Musturi (Finland). Curator: David Schilter.

Along with the exhibition comes the publication Baltic Comics Magazine š! #57 ”Mythbústers,” which collects these stories and gets distributed worldwide.

Organized by Kuš! in collaboration with Nordic Council of Minister’s Offices in Latvia and Estonia.

Supported by Latvian State Culture Capital Foundation, Nordic Council of Minister’s Offices in Latvia and Estonia, Danish Cultural Institute and Embassy of Sweden in Riga.