Urmo Vaikla “An Island Is Not an Island. Shades of Dark Heritage”

27.08 – 26.09.2026

Opening 27.08. 18:00

“An Island Is Not an Island. Shades of Dark Heritage” is the first exhibition of Urmo Vaikla’s practice-based doctoral research. It explores military architectural heritage in the context of Hiiumaa and its impact on the island’s landscape, local community, and collective memory.
Although island may appear separate and isolated, it has always been influenced by global political processes. Defensive lines and military installations were built on the Hiiumaa both before and during the First and Second World Wars. A rich military heritage also dates from the 50-year period of Soviet occupation, when the island was the westernmost border zone of the Soviet Empire. Traces of this history remain visible: boundary strips once ploughed and raked through the coastal forests, defensive trenches branching out like a capillary network, and barbed wire still scattered here and there. Countless bunkers, cannon positions of coastal batteries, border guard towers, and training grounds remain abandoned in the landscape, evoking a dark history embedded in the island’s natural environment.

Urmo Vaikla’s research focuses on spatial conditions in the aftermath of trauma, examining the persistence and adaptation of architectural heritage in the context of social and political change. The aim is to map and investigate spatial values and to seek answers to the questions of whether, and how, dark heritage can be interpreted and (re)used.

Methodologically, the exhibition project draws on two curated international creative residencies addressing military heritage—Time Lap and Pinhole—which took place at Kordon Art Residency on Hiiumaa between 2024 and 2026. The residency programmes explored political trauma through embodied (somatic) experience, personal objects, and individual experience. The exhibition is a visual and poetic synthesis of the material gathered and experienced during the residencies, together with the creative projects.

Artists participated in the residency program: Selina Bonelli, Thomas Reul , Alexander Petrounine, Anna Underowicz, Anu Pennanen, Kaisa Karvinen, Jona Kleinlein, Nelly Haag
Residency Program Curators: Urmo Vaikla, Tüüne-Kristin Vaikla
The exhibition is supported by: Eesti Kultuurkapital, Eesti Sisearhitektide Liit, ühendus Ruum ja Vorm

“STUDIO: EKA Architecture and Urban Planning Graduation Projects 2004–2026”
EKA Gallery 12.09.–11.10.2026
Open Tue–Sat 12–6 pm Sun 12–4 pm
Opening: Friday, September 11 at 6 pm

Architecture is one of the disciplines through which societies imagine alternatives to present conditions. In Estonia too, architecture students have for decades asked in their graduation projects what other lives could be possible for us. Characteristically for the discipline, answers have been sought through imaginative representations – drawings, models and texts.

The graduation project, a creative genre in which realisation is not expected, has allowed students to wander and stake out a place of their own in this strange territory between hard reality and pure imagination, starting from existing conditions, yet able to play out possibilities more freely, sometimes well beyond the bounds of realism.

From 2004 to 2026, EKA’s Department of Architecture and Urban Planning has supervised this work in the studio format. “STUDIO” situates this format within the broader history of architectural education and practice-based research, while looking back at the rich archive of graduation projects that have accumulated over these years. What have successive cohorts considered worthy of attention, investigation and change? What architectural responses have they imagined? And what role has the studio played in shaping such inquiry?

Curators: Eik Hermann, Andres Ojari, Toomas Tammis (Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, EKA)
Exhibition design: Andres Ojari, Toomas Tammis
Design of light boxes: Raul Kalvo (InPhysica Technology)
Graphic design: Stuudio Stuudio
Technical support: Ats Kruusing, Eugenio Marini, Éric-Olivier Thériault-Raymond

Thanks: all the supervisors and students of the EKA department of Architecture and Urban Planning 2004–2026, Sander Haugas, Oliver Kanniste, Mikk-Mait Kivi, Jevgeni Krassi, Priit Kõiv, Tiina Tammet, Avo Tragel

The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn City and Sadolin Estonia.
Opening drinks from mirai™ and Põhjala Brewery.

On September 7, from 5:30 PM to 7:00 PM, a discussion group “Designing with Loneliness” will take place in the stairwell of the EKA atrium, where Ruth-Helene Melioranski, a researcher at the EKA Faculty of Design, will talk with Yanfang Zhang and Tokushu Inamura, lecturers at Kyushu University.

How do different cultural understandings of loneliness shape design?
How do globalization and social changes affect our understanding of loneliness?
What relationships, trust, and forms of knowledge are needed when design enters such a personal realm?

The discussion group will introduce the Faculty of Design’s autumn lecture series “Design Issues”, the subtheme of which in 2026 is “Design and Futures”.

A joint exhibition by the EKA Textile Department and Kreenholm textile artists on the process of printed-fabric making

Opening at Narva Art Residency on September 5th 16:00, From Sketch to Printed Fabric brings together archival materials by Kreenholm textile artists and contemporary printed fabrics by students of the Estonian Academy of Arts.

The exhibition looks at the process behind printed textiles: how a repeat is constructed, how a sketch develops into a printable fabric, and how colour separation and registration shape the final result.

The exhibition presents works and archival materials by Kreenholm textile artists from 1960–2000, including sketches, repeats, colour studies, print proofs and fabrics. Alongside them are large-scale digital prints by EKA Textile Department students, designed in relation to Kreenholm’s historical repeat dimensions of 640 and 914 mm and bringing contemporary themes and perspectives into the exhibition.

An installative printing table with technical samples introduces the screen-printing process from idea to printed fabric. Visitors can also experiment with creating their own patterns and immediately see how they work in repetition.

Opening: 5 September 2026
Exhibition: 6 September 2026–10 January 2027
Location: Narva Art Residency (NART)

Curator: Alyona Movko-Mägi
Exhibition design: Eva Reiska

Works and archival materials by Kreenholm textile artists, 1960–2000

Estonian Academy of Arts, Department of Textile Design
Artists: Rosena Marju Melvin, Annabel Mustasaar, Ethel Noortoots, Karin Sarv, Hannah Parman, Katriin Tammoja, Getlin Tammoja, Eliisa Leppik, Marta Velda Loos, Freia Mugra, Lisandra Murumets, Helena-Mai Posti

Tutors: Krista Leesi and Piret Valk

Supporters and partners: Estonian Academy of Arts, EKA Textile Design, Cultural Endowment of Estonia / Eesti Kultuurkapital, Narva Art Residency (NART)

Narva Venice
3.–6.9.2026

In September the nomadic Pori Biennale takes place in Narva Venice (Kulgu), a striking post-industrial area in eastern Estonia, and imagines what a biennale could be when shaped by local histories, architectures and communities. Continuing Porin kulttuurisäätö collective’s long-term research into the biennial format, the project examines how a biennale might function as a site for co-existence, collaboration, activation and event. Art does not always need grandiose exhibition halls but rather people, who come together around it.

Artists: Baran Caginli (TR/FI), Kristin Wiking (FI/SE), Jonas Palekas (LT), Sashapasha: Pavel and Sasha Rotts (FI), Aksel Haagensen (EE) and Ulvi Haagensen (AU/EE) Cotyledon project: Helena Atkin (UK/EE) and Daria Titova (EE/UA).

Curators: Anna Jensen & Eliisa Suvanto, Porin kulttuurisäätö

Pori Biennale VII takes place alongside the music and city festival Station Narva that since 2018 fills Estonia’s easternmost city Narva with music, art, communal gatherings and cross-sector initiatives.

The event is kindly supported by Frame Contemporary Art Finland, Kone Foundation, The Finnish Cultural Foundation, Oskar Öflunds stiftelse, and created in collaboration with NART residency, Station Narva, Narva Gate, and the Finnish Institute in Estonia

Graphic design by Daria Titova.

On September 5 at 18:00, the exhibition “Who Gets a Seat at the Table” by August Kilmi and Ly-Ann Kõllo will open at Krulli SAAL.

The artists explore the dream of an ideal family, the expectations formed in childhood, and the disappointment that arises when a person feels there is no place for them within that dream. The exhibition examines family and home, and how a queer person fits—or does not fit—into these spaces.

The exhibition will be open until September 20, every day from 14:00 to 19:00.

Graphic design: Ly-Ann Kõllo

Anne-Solène Rolland is General Director of the Institut national d’histoire de l’art in Paris (French national institute for art history). She previously served as Head of Museum Department at the French Ministry for Culture, and as Scientific Director at the Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac. In both positions she dealed with restitutions and provenance research of museum artefacts. Based on these experiences, and on research currently lead at INHA, she will give a insight on how French institutions and professionals have addressed these issues.

One of the starting points for the exhibition is Karel Čapek’s The Gardener’s Year. Čapek’s sharp and humorous observations on a (city) gardener’s desires, joys, disappointments and endless need to care for something immediately struck a chord.

Having spent an increasing amount of time at a summer cottage in recent years, I have also begun to develop my own, still rather vague understanding of rural life and the rhythms of nature. These rhythms can be calming and abundant, but at the same time ruthless and starkly indifferent.

Autumn evenings and nights in the countryside are dark, unless the moon is shining. If wearing a reflector in the city is recommended, in the countryside making yourself visible can be a necessity.

A beautiful summer is pleasant and abundant, but already in August the creatures that have kept their distance from the house begin pushing their way back in through cracks and openings. All it takes is a single day away for birds to devour all the berries ripening on the bushes, or for the last apples fallen beneath the trees to disappear overnight.

It is uncomfortably sobering to realise how fragile life is, and how much care is required to maintain this small part of our surroundings that we try to “domesticate” or cultivate. Even if one somehow manages to avoid disease, fungi and frost, a vole suddenly moving into the garden can be enough to throw the entire order of things into question.

In the countryside, humans are not necessarily the masters. Everyone is competing for food, light and space. If humans imagine they have an advantage in this struggle, it is only for as long as they remain vigilant and keep things “in order”. In the end, everything is food for someone or something.

Of course, one can take an arrogant position – scatter poison left and right, put up deterrents, or concrete over every available patch of ground. But at least I don’t want the countryside to become too orderly and controlled. That would take away one of the reasons for being there in the first place.

The ant, the wasp and the snail all have their place. So does the frog.

With thanks to: Estonian Artists’ Association, ARS Art Factory, EKA Foto, EVA Lab, Katrin Koit, Lipuvabrik OÜ, Taavi Varm, my wife, and my mother.

Open Mon-Fri 12-18, Sat 12-16

Finissage: 28 September, 18:00

* This plea has stayed with me from a period I once spent in Kütiorg, which significantly reshaped my understanding of living alongside nature and of nature conservation as an alternative worldview – one in which slogans and radicalism do not take centre stage, but rather common sense and an understanding of what is and is not possible.

Join us for the opening of the Nordic and Baltic Comics Exhibition “Mythbústers” on Thursday, September 3 at 5 pm in the lobby of the Estonian Academy of Arts!

The opening will be followed by an artist talk on the stairs of the lobby at 5.30 pm, where the artists participating in the exhibition Emmi Valve and Joonas Sildre will talk with the exhibition curator David Schilter. The talk will take place in English.

Read more about the exhibition here.

As part of the exhibition “Mythbústers”, a comic-themed workshop for students will be held on Friday, September 4 from 2 to 4 pm, led by Emmi Valve. The workshop will be held in English.

Participation is free of charge, but places are limited (up to 20 participants). Please register here.

More information about the exhibition “Mythbústers”.