Ron Verlin’s Existential Fashion Exhibition at Draakon Gallery

On Thursday, September 25th at 18.00, Ron Verlin’s first solo exhibition that which I was in life, I am in death will open at Draakoni Gallery. The exhibition brings fashion into the gallery context in a distinctive way, framing it through existential and social perspectives.

The spatial installation presented in the gallery integrates fashion, light, and sound to create an environment that invites visitors to engage in existential reflection. Central to the exhibition are garments conceived as symbolic objects, embodying themes of decadence, decay, and transition as metaphorical states of weariness that precede redemption or rebirth. These motifs unfold through a language of symbols and allegory. At the root of the project is the artist’s dream of navigating a city with a bottomless pit at its core. The artist later found echoes of this haunting dream in the pages of Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, and together with Purgatorio, these seminal texts served as foundational sources of inspiration.

Ron Verlin is an emerging fashion designer whose work draws upon faith, mythology, and the psyche. The works engage with existential concerns against the backdrop of a world marked by scientific progress and technological advancement, yet spiritual depletion, raising questions about the possibility of redemption and renewal. The exhibition interrogates fashion’s role in contemporary society, questioning whether it functions solely as aesthetic expression or whether it can also serve as a conduit for critical inquiry.

The curator of the exhibition is Sten Ojavee (Estonian Center for Contemporary Art), and the project manager is Olivia Soans.

Supported by: Cultural Endowment of Estonia
Partner: Center For Contemporary Arts, Estonia

The exhibitions at Draakoni Gallery are supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, the Ministry of Culture, and Liviko AS.

Fashion designers Ron-Jonas Verlin (Ron Verlin), Maria Roosiaas, Jaagup Kaiv, Kristiina Tali and Hanna Tiina Pekk from the Estonian Academy of Arts’ Fashion Department will present the best works from their successfully defended graduation collections in the spring of 2025 at the Solaris Centre.

The works selected by the designers will be on display on the Solaris Centre’s Design Street from 29.09-12.10.2025.

On September 17 at 16:00 in room A501, Leyla Acaroglu will give a public lecture titled “Design as Tool for Systems Intervention”. The lecture is part of the Faculty of Design’s public lecture series “Public Lectures in Design: Adjusting Perspectives,” curated by Stella Runnel and Taavi Hallimäe.

Designer, sociologist, and educational entrepreneur Leyla Acaroglu brings a wealth of creative flair to sustainability and the circular economy. As a provocateur in these fields, she invites audiences to rethink the challenges we face. This public lecture highlights how Acaroglu has built a career by leveraging her design practice as a powerful tool for change.

The public lectures are open to students, faculty, as well as anyone else interested in design!

Dr. Leyla Acaroglu is an internationally respected expert in sustainability and the circular economy, an educational entrepreneur and an award-winning creative change-maker. As a designer and sociologist, she weaves systems thinking, sustainability sciences, and creative approaches to develop global interventions in education, communication, business, and design. For her work in advancing science and innovation in sustainability, she was named Champion of the Earth by the United Nations, a Change-Maker by LinkedIn, and is a mainstage TED speaker who leads presentations with leaders around the world on activating positive change for a sustainable, circular and regenerative future. As an educational entrepreneur, she founded The UnSchool, an experimental knowledge lab for adults, Circular Futures, a circular economy sustainability training platform and developed the Disruptive Design Method. Leyla also created the Circular Classroom for Finland and the Anatomy of Action in collaboration with the UNEP.

André Malraux’s Museum without Walls (1947) aims to “destroy” art history through the production of an eternal present of art in continuous metamorphosis. I will focus on the mimetic uses of Malraux’s Opus by various different artists in the 1950s and the 1960s, in order to show an important anti-historical shift not only in art, but also in the thought and politics of this period.
Maria Stavrinaki is Professor of history of contemporary art at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland.

Lecture is held in collaboration between KVI and Estonian Doctoral school of humanities and Arts.

Public program at the exhibition “30×30” at EKA Gallery
Participation in the events is free!

Thursday, September 11 at 4–6 pm
Event “And this is not all…”
Drawing lesson with Malle Jürgenson, head of the Interior Architecture Department (on the second floor of EKA Gallery, in Estonian)
NB! The number of participants is limited, register here.

Sunday, September 14
At 1 pm, guided tour led by curators Madli Kaljuste and Paco Ulman (in Estonian)
At 2 pm, curatorial tour (in English)

Sunday, September 21 at 3–5 pm
A discussion, where topics that arose during the planning of the exhibition and during the exhibition will be discussed.

Read more about the exhibition here.

“30×30. Exhibition on the Graphic Arts Collection of the Faculty of Architecture at the Estonian Academy of Arts”
EKA Gallery 29.08.–21.09.2025
Open Tue–Sat 12–6 pm Sun 12–4 pm
Opening: Thu 28.08. at 7 pm

The Estonian Academy of Arts has been educating architects for 75 years. The exhibition “30×30”, which kicks off the anniversary year, explores the past decades of the Faculty of Architecture of the Estonian Academy of Arts through graphic assignments from the first year.

“Architectural Design I”, “Project Graphics”, “Composition I” – behind the different names lies a preparatory studio that has existed since the 1970s, which has been completed by all first-year students of the EKA Department of Architecture. Also in 2025, new architecture students will be introduced to rapidographs, the materiality of paper, questions of composition, the differences and similarities between plan and section, and the possibilities and impossibilities of graphic imagery. This is the students’ first exposure to the tools of an architect, which are both the means of depicting and creating space, as well as the ways of thinking about space and communicating it on a more abstract level.

The archive exhibition “30×30” opens up an array of graphic works secretly collected in the EKA Museum and the archives of the Faculty of Architecture. The paper and ink and the form of the works seem unchanged, yet the nearly seven hundred sheets reveal the emphases, feelings and tasks that have changed over the course of half a century, on the basis of which the shaping of a person into an architect begins.

The works exhibited at the exhibition belong to the collection of the EKA Museum and the archives of the Faculty of Architecture of the Estonian Academy of Arts.

Exhibition organizers and architecture: Madli Kaljuste, Paco Ulman
Participants: former first-year students of the Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn University of Arts and the State Art Institute of the Estonian SSR
Graphic design: Maria Muuk
Exhibition construction: Dream Team (Johannes Säre, Dénes Farkas, Eke Ao Nettan, Paul Säre)
Technical support: Karmo Migur
Lighting design: Mikk-Mait Kivi
The exhibition is supported by the Estonian Association of Architects, the Estonian Cultural Endowment, the Faculty of Architecture of the Estonian Academy of Arts, ETS NORD, Niguliste Museum, Sadolin Estonia and Tallinn City.
We also thank: Ulla Alla, Imbi Hepner, Malle Jürgenson, Tiina Kaljuste, Reeli Kõiv, Laura Linsi, Hannes Lung, Mari Möldre, Andres Ojari, Sille Pihlak, Tarvo Roose, Tarmo Saaret, Mihkel Säre, Merilin Tee
Opening drinks from Põhjala Brewery.

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Public program at the exhibition “30×30” at EKA Gallery
Participation in the events is free!

Thursday, September 11 at 4–6 pm
Event “And this is not all…”
Drawing lesson with Malle Jürgenson, head of the Interior Architecture Department (on the second floor of EKA Gallery, in Estonian)
NB! The number of participants is limited, register here.

Sunday, September 14
At 1 pm, guided tour led by curators Madli Kaljuste and Paco Ulman (in Estonian)
At 2 pm, curatorial tour (in English)

Sunday, September 21 at 3 pm
Discussion

The Estonian artist, who has been living and working in London since 2013, will introduce her work and creative processes.

Angela Maasalu (1990) is a painter who deals with personal and intimate themes in her work. She is interested in the contradictory human experience, which simultaneously acknowledges happiness and unhappiness, the drama and comedy of life. Maasalu came to deal with personal and everyday themes during her master’s studies, and after graduating she has touched on the everyday problems of her generation. In her work she deals with sociality, relationships, personal space and a sense of home.

Angela Maasalu has studied painting and art history at the University of Tartu (BA 2012), painting at the Estonian Academy of Arts (MA 2015) and furthered her studies at UAL Central Saint Martins in England (2013–2014). In 2017 and 2019 she was nominated for the AkzoNobel Art Prize (formerly the Sadolin Art Prize). She has had solo exhibitions in Tallinn, London, Heraklion, Greece and Shanghai.

On 1 October, 2025 Eik Hermann, external doctoral student of architecture and urban planning will defend his doctoral thesis „Toward Matter-Environmental Pragmapoetics: Studies of Theory-Practice Separation“.
The public defense will take place at 13.00 at EKA (Põhja pst 7), room A101.

Thesis is available in EKA digital repository.

Supervisor: Margus Ott, PhD (Estonian University of Life Sciences)
External reviewers: Prof. Rein Raud (Tallinn University), Prof. Randall Teal (University of Idaho)
Opponents: Prof. Rein Raud and Jacob C.T. Voorthuis, PhD (Eindhoven University of Technology)

Summary:
A key distinction in Western culture is between theory and practice. Ideally, these two domains support and nourish each other. Practice benefits from reflection and a broader perspective, while theory gains from experiences and skillsets stemming from engagements with the world. Still, while humanity is facing major, almost insurmountable challenges (such as climate warming, loss of biodiversity, and rising social inequality), which call for tight cooperation between theorists and practitioners, these domains have grown increasingly apart. Moreover, there are deep divisions within both theory and practice themselves. The current thesis examines how the conceptual schemes and broader conceptware in the West have contributed to this situation, and how alternative conceptual schemes and conceptwares might help to mitigate it.

The thesis begins with a conceptual-historical study, with particular attention to the social aspects of this history. The separation of theory and practice began already in Ancient Greece, where, under the influence of aristocratic values, the highest regard was given to knowledge that was not directly useful and could be pursued primarily by those who could afford leisure time. In addition to its detachment from practical usefulness, such knowledge was characterized by independence from spatio-temporal surroundings: ideal knowledge was supposed to hold true in every context. As revealed by a comparison with the conceptware of premodern China, this choice was by no means the only possible one. The early foundational choices in the West subsequently shaped the development of its later conceptual frameworks, resulting in a dominant scheme that views practice as the application (and so-called re-environmentalization) of theory. Among its other effects, this scheme has also influenced the formation of divisions and hierarchies between different domains of practice.

After conducting the initial conceptual-historical analysis, the thesis takes a more experimental turn. The aim is to explore and experiment with new concepts and conceptual schemes in the hope of untangling the web of current conceptual knots and behavioral patterns, and fruitfully reconfiguring the relationship between theory and practice. One important strategy guiding these experiments is a rethinking of the relationship between knowledge and surroundings. Another key strategy is to focus on the initial phases of both knowledge making and action – the underlying assumption is that different domains share more commonalities at the beginning of a work process than at its end. I outline a vision of human practice that is based on the “practice” of the world itself, sometimes engaging with it by riding its tendencies like a wave, and sometimes offering them resistance and shifting them. At the end of the thesis, I also propose the seeds or an outline for beginning-heavy research.

Loneliness is a significant challenge across all modern societies. Consequently, the way individuals and families establish and maintain relationships has become a considerable concern in design. In this open seminar, Japanese and Estonian design researchers will explore how design can help tackle this growing problem on both personal and societal levels.

Estonia × Japan: exploring design’s role in combating loneliness.

Keynote by Yasuyuki Hirai

“Inclusive Design for Loneliness”

Inclusive design is an individual-driven approach, while societal design is a society-driven approach. There is a relationship between individual loneliness and social exclusion, and the two can combine to form a vicious cycle.

This international collaborative project between EKA and Kyushu University offers an innovative approach to addressing loneliness and societal design. As an inclusive designer, Yasuyuki Hirai presents examples of how I have addressed this issue to date, drawing on principles of inclusive design.

Keynote by Ruth-Helene Melioranski

“Embracing Loneliness through Relational Design”

Ruth-Helene Melioranski explores how relational design shifts emphasis from isolated individuals to networks of care and connection. She illustrates this approach through a patient journey designed for the Estonian Health Insurance Fund’s endoprosthesis care pathway.

Case study by Janeli Peska

“Behaviourally Guided Intervention to Reduce Loneliness”

Janeli Pelska discusses how behavioural design can provide new tools to tackle the increasing problem of loneliness. Based on her master’s thesis, she introduces an intervention designed to promote social connections through behaviourally guided strategies.

Panel discussion

The seminar concludes with an open panel discussion to reflect on the role of design in combating loneliness. The conversation centres on how design can inspire new ways of fostering connection and belonging in our societies.

Moderated by Tanel Kärp.

Panelists:

Yasuyuki Hirai

Tokushu Inamura

Yanfang Zhang

Ruth-Helene Melioranski