English – Page 5 – Estonian Academy of Arts

04.03.2026 — 31.03.2026

Katariin Mudist “Temporary Solution”

Contemporary Art

5–31 March 2026

On Wednesday, 4 March at 18:00, Katariin Mudist’s exhibition “Temporary Solution”(Ajutine lahendus) will open at ARS Showcase Gallery.

“Temporary Solution” brings together doorholders collected from various institutions, mainly from Estonia’s cultural field. Doorholders are born out of necessity: something needs to be held open for a moment, something needs to be let through. Yet a temporary solution tends to become permanent without anyone noticing. In this way, an accidental form and material can become surprisingly universal.

The exhibition focuses on small moments of annoyance: when your bike tyre is flat again; when you forget your towel, but discover it at the gym; when you have to return the shirt you ordered; when the internet keeps buffering during a film; when someone explains something you already know; when, at the grocery store, the line you chose is the slowest, or when the doorholder is missing. This annoyance is a minor disturbance that, through repetition, begins to shape attention, movement, and one’s attitude toward space. A door has been kept open for years with the help of an apparently insignificant piece of material. But one day, arms full of things, that familiar wooden block is no longer there. There is a brief delay and mild irritation: something else is quickly found as a substitute, the door is held open again, and work continues. The moment passes and is very likely forgotten immediately.

Over the course of a year, the collected doorholders have held open different kinds of doors (main entrances, side doors, back doors, etc.) and operate according to different principles: as a wedge, as a threshold stopper, or as weight. What unites these objects is that they come from institutions where doors are not merely architectural elements but tools of access and work organisation. Doorholders are small, unofficial spatial interventions that make movement smoother and signal for whom a space “works. ” Removing them and gathering them into one room reveals a layer of temporary solutions on which institutional space quietly depends.

The door to the exhibition is always (temporarily) open.

Katariin Mudist is an interdisciplinary Estonian artist who believes that the most telling things are often those that usually remain behind the door. She is interested in small annoyances that arise, for example, when a door refuses to cooperate- whether it’s an automatic door that won’t open or a missing doorstop. Humour and irony run through her practice. She examines social norms and the practices and meanings of being an artist within the context of the cultural field and its institutions, using material and process-based approaches. She is currently studying in the Fine Arts Studio programme at the Estonian Academy of Arts, searching for common ground between visual and material-centred art. Mudist holds an MA in Contemporary Art (EKA, 2022) and a BA in Media and Advertising Design (Pallas University of Applied Sciences, 2018). She has received the Adamson-Eric Scholarship (2025) and the Young Sculptor Award (2025). In 2026, together with Keithy Kuuspu, she received the main prize of the Visual and Applied Arts Endowment for the exhibition “Unfortunately, You Were Not Selected This Time” (2025) and the performative Awards Gala (2025).

Exhibition team:
Exhibition design and production assistance: Alden Jõgisuu
Graphic design: Katariin Mudist
Supporters: Punch Club, Põhjala, Estonian Artists’ Association
Special thanks: Alan Voodla, Johanna Mudist, Eva Nava, Keithy Kuuspu, Maria Elise
Remme, Helena Pass, and all the institutions from which the collected doorholders originate.

Exhibition open:
5–31 March 2026
Mon–Fri 12–18, Sat 12–16

Posted by Andres Lõo — Permalink

Katariin Mudist “Temporary Solution”

Wednesday 04 March, 2026 — Tuesday 31 March, 2026

Contemporary Art

5–31 March 2026

On Wednesday, 4 March at 18:00, Katariin Mudist’s exhibition “Temporary Solution”(Ajutine lahendus) will open at ARS Showcase Gallery.

“Temporary Solution” brings together doorholders collected from various institutions, mainly from Estonia’s cultural field. Doorholders are born out of necessity: something needs to be held open for a moment, something needs to be let through. Yet a temporary solution tends to become permanent without anyone noticing. In this way, an accidental form and material can become surprisingly universal.

The exhibition focuses on small moments of annoyance: when your bike tyre is flat again; when you forget your towel, but discover it at the gym; when you have to return the shirt you ordered; when the internet keeps buffering during a film; when someone explains something you already know; when, at the grocery store, the line you chose is the slowest, or when the doorholder is missing. This annoyance is a minor disturbance that, through repetition, begins to shape attention, movement, and one’s attitude toward space. A door has been kept open for years with the help of an apparently insignificant piece of material. But one day, arms full of things, that familiar wooden block is no longer there. There is a brief delay and mild irritation: something else is quickly found as a substitute, the door is held open again, and work continues. The moment passes and is very likely forgotten immediately.

Over the course of a year, the collected doorholders have held open different kinds of doors (main entrances, side doors, back doors, etc.) and operate according to different principles: as a wedge, as a threshold stopper, or as weight. What unites these objects is that they come from institutions where doors are not merely architectural elements but tools of access and work organisation. Doorholders are small, unofficial spatial interventions that make movement smoother and signal for whom a space “works. ” Removing them and gathering them into one room reveals a layer of temporary solutions on which institutional space quietly depends.

The door to the exhibition is always (temporarily) open.

Katariin Mudist is an interdisciplinary Estonian artist who believes that the most telling things are often those that usually remain behind the door. She is interested in small annoyances that arise, for example, when a door refuses to cooperate- whether it’s an automatic door that won’t open or a missing doorstop. Humour and irony run through her practice. She examines social norms and the practices and meanings of being an artist within the context of the cultural field and its institutions, using material and process-based approaches. She is currently studying in the Fine Arts Studio programme at the Estonian Academy of Arts, searching for common ground between visual and material-centred art. Mudist holds an MA in Contemporary Art (EKA, 2022) and a BA in Media and Advertising Design (Pallas University of Applied Sciences, 2018). She has received the Adamson-Eric Scholarship (2025) and the Young Sculptor Award (2025). In 2026, together with Keithy Kuuspu, she received the main prize of the Visual and Applied Arts Endowment for the exhibition “Unfortunately, You Were Not Selected This Time” (2025) and the performative Awards Gala (2025).

Exhibition team:
Exhibition design and production assistance: Alden Jõgisuu
Graphic design: Katariin Mudist
Supporters: Punch Club, Põhjala, Estonian Artists’ Association
Special thanks: Alan Voodla, Johanna Mudist, Eva Nava, Keithy Kuuspu, Maria Elise
Remme, Helena Pass, and all the institutions from which the collected doorholders originate.

Exhibition open:
5–31 March 2026
Mon–Fri 12–18, Sat 12–16

Posted by Andres Lõo — Permalink

02.04.2026

EKA Doctoral School Conference

Doctoral School

EKA Doctoral School Conference will take place on 2nd April 2026

Please register by 29th March.
Conference will be held in English.

PROGRAMME

08.40 Registration

09.00 Welcome by Prof. Linda Kaljundi (EKA Vice Rector for Research, Head of Doctoral School)

09.10 Opening Lecture
Moderator Prof. Linda Kaljundi

Dr. Anna Carolina Jensen “In-Between Chaos and Control”(EKA, postdoctoral researcher)

Abstract

In my talk I will present my doctoral thesis Encyclopedia of In-Betweenness: An Exploration of a Collective Artistic Research Practice (Aalto University, 2023) and my postdoctoral research project City Is the Thing Bodies and Time Move Through: Concrete Structures of In-Betweenness. While my doctoral thesis explored curating as a (collective) research method and through its form, encyclopedia, the multiplicity of networks and knowledges which constitute the practice, the postdoctoral research studies how environments, architectures, and leisure spaces perform, shape and structure historical layers, and in what ways does the past continue to haunt everyday life in the present. In my research I use Narva as a case study and perceive a city as a place that times and bodies, ideologies and societal systems move through, and consider methods and methodologies that happen in the space in-between chaos and control, knowledge and non-knowledge, language, translations and things and experiences that escape naming. By creating research situations that enable emergent events, practice-led artistic research embraces uncertainty as constitutive of knowledge, operating in the fertile tension between chaos and control, structure and openness.

Panel 1: Art History & Visual Culture
Moderator Prof. Andres Kurg

10.10 Rahul Sharma “Peripheral In-Between Identities on the Eastern Borderlands: Films of Eléonore de Montesquiou” (supervisors Dr. Mari Laanemets, Prof. Linda Kaljundi).

Abstract

The talk delves into liminal identity representations of the Russian-Estonian ethno-linguistic minority in works of the French-Estonian artist and documentary filmmaker Eléonore de Montesquiou (b. 1970), in particular focusing on Olga and Olga (2017) and Eksperiment Katja. (2020). I analyse how liminal border identities are affected by opposing notions of Euclidean and relational time-space, and the concept of the Möbius strip. Deploying close-textual analysis, I, then, analyse the formal characteristics of the films by close-reading the usage of cinematic apparatus and film processes to create varied layers of both bordered identities and the bordered spaces inhabited by the depicted characters. Finally, I reflect on de Montesquiou’s own ‘non-political subjectivised third-positionality’ via her gaze and epistemological construct that creates liminal and ambiguous layers of identities within her represented characters.

10.45 Mie Mortensen “A Philosophy of Sponges: The Influence of Ernst Haeckel on Ivan Leonidov” (supervisor Prof. Andres Kurg).

Abstract

Due to lack of description and information, Soviet architect Ivan Leonidov’s final project — a series of images with the alleged title City of the Sun (1942-59) — is often interpreted in the light of the eponymous novel by Tomasso Campanella. While this Renaissance philosopher was indeed important to the architect’s thinking, Leonidov drew his inspiration from a wide range of disciplines. This presentation explores the particular case of the German zoologist Ernst Haeckel’s work on marine invertebrates vis-a-vis the architect’s projects. Not only do Leonidov’s plans and drawings contain patterns resembling Haeckel’s illustrations, as I try to demonstrate as part of my dissertation, Leonidov’s philosophy of architecture can be said to mirror the German zoologist’s theories of ontogenesis.

11.20 Coffee break

11.40 Anneli Porri “How to Explain Pictures… to Ourselves?
Mediating the Artwork and Supporting Meaning-Making in Art History Education” (supervisor Prof. Linda Kaljundi).

Abstract

In art history teaching at the general education level, factual knowledge and the complexity of historical context often dominate. Within a multilayered and demanding visual–verbal learning situation, there is a risk of losing the personal, emotional, and cognitively demanding experience of encountering art that supports the construction of meaning. In my teaching practice, I am interested in how foundational knowledge of art history can be combined with creative interpretation so that, through open-ended questions, visual noticing, comparison, and justification, learning in both general and extracurricular art education can support learners’ personal meaning-making. In this presentation, I introduce an action research project conducted in an extracurricular art school. Based on observation, students’ creative work, and their feedback, the study explores which strategies of cognitive activation can be applied in art history education and how these strategies influence the participation, sense-making, and development of visual competence among students aged 13–17.

12.15 Marten Esko “The Contemporary as Method: Use, Abuse, and Critical Afterlife” (supervisor Prof. Virve Sarapik).

Abstract

The presentation examines the contemporary as a critical-theoretical concept and as a potential methodological problem. Over the past two decades, the contemporary has become a widely circulating framework in art history, cultural studies, literary criticism, and social theory. Initially introduced to challenge linear modernity and historicism and to conceptualize the temporal complexity of the present, the concept has, over time, become an imprecise and diffuse signifier rather than a more concretely defined one—particularly in the context of contemporary art. However, before considering the abandonment of the term, the presentation—drawing on the ideas of Giorgio Agamben, Zsuzsa Barossi, Jacob Lund, Peter Osborne, and Lionel Ruffel—proposes understanding contemporaneity as a method: as a critical, non-modern relationship to time that is attentive to the coexistence of multiple temporalities, histories and historicities. Understood in this way, the contemporary no longer functions as a periodizing label or a marker of temporal novelty, but rather as a potential diagnostic tool for the critical analysis of contemporary art.

12.50 Rahel Aerin Eslas “The Aesthetics of Nature in Denis Diderot’s Philosophy and Art Criticism” (supervisors Prof. Krista Kodres, Prof. Frédéric Ogée).

Abstract

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) was a philosopher and encyclopedist in Enlightenment France, who believed that nature should act as the lead example in all areas of society and culture. In my dissertation, I am researching the role of nature in Diderot’s aesthetics in his works on philosophy and art criticism. In my presentation, I will introduce a chapter from my dissertation, “Nature in Diderot’s Language of Criticism,” which looks at how nature influenced the artistic terminology used by Diderot. Diderot thought that an accurate imitation of nature should be the main achievement for all artists, as through this skill of studying and understanding nature, the artist will have the ability to enhance the perception and experience of it. This chapter points out and elaborates on the instances when an aspect of painting must adhere to nature’s laws, and when the artist needs to distance themselves from nature by enhancing the traits they observe.

13.25 Lunch

Panel 2: Art & Design
Moderator Dr. Jaana Päeva

14.00 Kadri Liis Rääk “The Artist’s Body as a Sensory Threshold” (supervisor Dr. Liina Unt).

Abstract

In this presentation, the artist’s body is positioned as a sensory threshold, a porous membrane between the self and the world. I examine how the creation-in-making process is structured and how to pinpoint the tactile place of origin of art. Through a shift in habitual patterns and a withdrawal into performative artistic ascesis, the practice resists demands for constant productivity and visibility. This becomes an incision into the nature of the creative process, in which agency shifts from a maker of objects toward a mediator of attention. The threshold state is proposed as a specific mode of being that addresses openness, vulnerability, and an attentive co-existence with the more-than-human, while working with resistance and uncertainty.

14.35 Taavi Varm “Co-creative video game creation as a practice of care” (supervisors Dr. Varvara Guljajeva, Dr. Helen Uusberg).

Abstract

My research examines how the co-creative video game creation process can function as a practice of care that supports psychological well-being. Well-being is approached not as a fixed outcome, but as something that emerges through creative processes and reflective engagement. By focusing on the co-creative process, the study examines how care is enacted through collaboration, decision-making, and attention to lived experience within the creative process itself. Looking at game creation as an artistic practice, explained through a case study in project EVA Lab, my main thesis in the talk is that psychological wellbeing and creative sustainability can be understood as an emergent quality of creative processes, rather than solely as a measurable outcome.

15.10 Eva Liisa Kubinyi “Wondering Pathways Toward Community-Based Service Designing from Rõuge” (supervisor Associate Prof. Josina Vink).

Abstract

The Dominant Service Design phenomenon overemphasis step-by-step procedures led by design experts. While community-based design approaches exist, these strategies overlook the everyday struggle of detaching from modernist design legacies. Without a clearer understanding of how to move toward community-based modalities, the profession risks erasing otherness. Drawing on a nine-month programmatic research-through-design project in South-Eastern Estonia, this paper conceptualizes wondering pathways—simultaneous yet contradictory movements toward community-based practices. This research contributes to service design by demonstrating multiple directions to community-based approaches and building compassion for messy in-between spaces of transformation. Moving toward community-based approaches requires ongoing openness to resisting dominant design practices that often reveal themselves gradually and through practice.

15.45 Aman Asif “Beyond the Visible Spectrum: Algal Entanglements” (supervisor Prof. Kärt Ojavee).

Abstract

Positioned within a more-than-human design framework, this research asks: how might designers attune to microbial others (algal) through creative practices to explore conditions and values for multispecies thriving? This presentation focuses on insights developed from practice-led research analysing my design works from the peer review exhibition Algal Phycosphere. The findings are grounded in reflection-on-action to surface methods and considerations that are relevant for practicing attunement to microbes and designing with living systems. The analysis was conducted on eleven design works using guided questions along with written reflections to identify key themes. The research contributes to relational approaches and developing ethics for multispecies thriving in more-than-human design contexts.

16.20 Coffee break

Panel 3: Architecture & Urban Planning
Moderator Dr. Eik Hermann

16.40 Alvin Järving “The Value-Space of Extending Building Lifespans: Locating Architectural Practice in a Conflicted Field” (supervisor Dr. Siim Tuksam).

Abstract

This paper articulates the value-space of extending building lifespans and opens up positioning architectural creative practice within an interdisciplinary field of longevity. Building longevity is not a singular concept but a contested domain where legal, constructional, cultural, and urban values intersect. Moreover, architecture and buildings are not synonymous: discourses on design, reuse, adaptation, and preservation overlap and often conflict within a broad conceptual field. Through a structured literature review, the paper systematizes key concepts, terms and ideas related to building lifespan across architecture and adjacent disciplines to a conceptual map. The framework clarifies how architects can locate their practice within this field and identify operative vectors of agency through design decisions.

17.15 Jaak-Adam Looveer “Urban Planning in the Comfort Zone: The Case of Tallinn” (supervisors Dr. Siim Tuksam, Dr. Priit-Kalev Parts).

17.50 Roundtable: Dr. Eik Hermann, Prof. Andres Kurg, Prof. Linda Kaljundi, Dr. Jaana Päeva

Contact:

Aljona Gineiko aljona.gineiko@artun.ee

Ragne Soosalu ragne.soosalu@artun.ee

Posted by Triin Männik — Permalink

EKA Doctoral School Conference

Thursday 02 April, 2026

Doctoral School

EKA Doctoral School Conference will take place on 2nd April 2026

Please register by 29th March.
Conference will be held in English.

PROGRAMME

08.40 Registration

09.00 Welcome by Prof. Linda Kaljundi (EKA Vice Rector for Research, Head of Doctoral School)

09.10 Opening Lecture
Moderator Prof. Linda Kaljundi

Dr. Anna Carolina Jensen “In-Between Chaos and Control”(EKA, postdoctoral researcher)

Abstract

In my talk I will present my doctoral thesis Encyclopedia of In-Betweenness: An Exploration of a Collective Artistic Research Practice (Aalto University, 2023) and my postdoctoral research project City Is the Thing Bodies and Time Move Through: Concrete Structures of In-Betweenness. While my doctoral thesis explored curating as a (collective) research method and through its form, encyclopedia, the multiplicity of networks and knowledges which constitute the practice, the postdoctoral research studies how environments, architectures, and leisure spaces perform, shape and structure historical layers, and in what ways does the past continue to haunt everyday life in the present. In my research I use Narva as a case study and perceive a city as a place that times and bodies, ideologies and societal systems move through, and consider methods and methodologies that happen in the space in-between chaos and control, knowledge and non-knowledge, language, translations and things and experiences that escape naming. By creating research situations that enable emergent events, practice-led artistic research embraces uncertainty as constitutive of knowledge, operating in the fertile tension between chaos and control, structure and openness.

Panel 1: Art History & Visual Culture
Moderator Prof. Andres Kurg

10.10 Rahul Sharma “Peripheral In-Between Identities on the Eastern Borderlands: Films of Eléonore de Montesquiou” (supervisors Dr. Mari Laanemets, Prof. Linda Kaljundi).

Abstract

The talk delves into liminal identity representations of the Russian-Estonian ethno-linguistic minority in works of the French-Estonian artist and documentary filmmaker Eléonore de Montesquiou (b. 1970), in particular focusing on Olga and Olga (2017) and Eksperiment Katja. (2020). I analyse how liminal border identities are affected by opposing notions of Euclidean and relational time-space, and the concept of the Möbius strip. Deploying close-textual analysis, I, then, analyse the formal characteristics of the films by close-reading the usage of cinematic apparatus and film processes to create varied layers of both bordered identities and the bordered spaces inhabited by the depicted characters. Finally, I reflect on de Montesquiou’s own ‘non-political subjectivised third-positionality’ via her gaze and epistemological construct that creates liminal and ambiguous layers of identities within her represented characters.

10.45 Mie Mortensen “A Philosophy of Sponges: The Influence of Ernst Haeckel on Ivan Leonidov” (supervisor Prof. Andres Kurg).

Abstract

Due to lack of description and information, Soviet architect Ivan Leonidov’s final project — a series of images with the alleged title City of the Sun (1942-59) — is often interpreted in the light of the eponymous novel by Tomasso Campanella. While this Renaissance philosopher was indeed important to the architect’s thinking, Leonidov drew his inspiration from a wide range of disciplines. This presentation explores the particular case of the German zoologist Ernst Haeckel’s work on marine invertebrates vis-a-vis the architect’s projects. Not only do Leonidov’s plans and drawings contain patterns resembling Haeckel’s illustrations, as I try to demonstrate as part of my dissertation, Leonidov’s philosophy of architecture can be said to mirror the German zoologist’s theories of ontogenesis.

11.20 Coffee break

11.40 Anneli Porri “How to Explain Pictures… to Ourselves?
Mediating the Artwork and Supporting Meaning-Making in Art History Education” (supervisor Prof. Linda Kaljundi).

Abstract

In art history teaching at the general education level, factual knowledge and the complexity of historical context often dominate. Within a multilayered and demanding visual–verbal learning situation, there is a risk of losing the personal, emotional, and cognitively demanding experience of encountering art that supports the construction of meaning. In my teaching practice, I am interested in how foundational knowledge of art history can be combined with creative interpretation so that, through open-ended questions, visual noticing, comparison, and justification, learning in both general and extracurricular art education can support learners’ personal meaning-making. In this presentation, I introduce an action research project conducted in an extracurricular art school. Based on observation, students’ creative work, and their feedback, the study explores which strategies of cognitive activation can be applied in art history education and how these strategies influence the participation, sense-making, and development of visual competence among students aged 13–17.

12.15 Marten Esko “The Contemporary as Method: Use, Abuse, and Critical Afterlife” (supervisor Prof. Virve Sarapik).

Abstract

The presentation examines the contemporary as a critical-theoretical concept and as a potential methodological problem. Over the past two decades, the contemporary has become a widely circulating framework in art history, cultural studies, literary criticism, and social theory. Initially introduced to challenge linear modernity and historicism and to conceptualize the temporal complexity of the present, the concept has, over time, become an imprecise and diffuse signifier rather than a more concretely defined one—particularly in the context of contemporary art. However, before considering the abandonment of the term, the presentation—drawing on the ideas of Giorgio Agamben, Zsuzsa Barossi, Jacob Lund, Peter Osborne, and Lionel Ruffel—proposes understanding contemporaneity as a method: as a critical, non-modern relationship to time that is attentive to the coexistence of multiple temporalities, histories and historicities. Understood in this way, the contemporary no longer functions as a periodizing label or a marker of temporal novelty, but rather as a potential diagnostic tool for the critical analysis of contemporary art.

12.50 Rahel Aerin Eslas “The Aesthetics of Nature in Denis Diderot’s Philosophy and Art Criticism” (supervisors Prof. Krista Kodres, Prof. Frédéric Ogée).

Abstract

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) was a philosopher and encyclopedist in Enlightenment France, who believed that nature should act as the lead example in all areas of society and culture. In my dissertation, I am researching the role of nature in Diderot’s aesthetics in his works on philosophy and art criticism. In my presentation, I will introduce a chapter from my dissertation, “Nature in Diderot’s Language of Criticism,” which looks at how nature influenced the artistic terminology used by Diderot. Diderot thought that an accurate imitation of nature should be the main achievement for all artists, as through this skill of studying and understanding nature, the artist will have the ability to enhance the perception and experience of it. This chapter points out and elaborates on the instances when an aspect of painting must adhere to nature’s laws, and when the artist needs to distance themselves from nature by enhancing the traits they observe.

13.25 Lunch

Panel 2: Art & Design
Moderator Dr. Jaana Päeva

14.00 Kadri Liis Rääk “The Artist’s Body as a Sensory Threshold” (supervisor Dr. Liina Unt).

Abstract

In this presentation, the artist’s body is positioned as a sensory threshold, a porous membrane between the self and the world. I examine how the creation-in-making process is structured and how to pinpoint the tactile place of origin of art. Through a shift in habitual patterns and a withdrawal into performative artistic ascesis, the practice resists demands for constant productivity and visibility. This becomes an incision into the nature of the creative process, in which agency shifts from a maker of objects toward a mediator of attention. The threshold state is proposed as a specific mode of being that addresses openness, vulnerability, and an attentive co-existence with the more-than-human, while working with resistance and uncertainty.

14.35 Taavi Varm “Co-creative video game creation as a practice of care” (supervisors Dr. Varvara Guljajeva, Dr. Helen Uusberg).

Abstract

My research examines how the co-creative video game creation process can function as a practice of care that supports psychological well-being. Well-being is approached not as a fixed outcome, but as something that emerges through creative processes and reflective engagement. By focusing on the co-creative process, the study examines how care is enacted through collaboration, decision-making, and attention to lived experience within the creative process itself. Looking at game creation as an artistic practice, explained through a case study in project EVA Lab, my main thesis in the talk is that psychological wellbeing and creative sustainability can be understood as an emergent quality of creative processes, rather than solely as a measurable outcome.

15.10 Eva Liisa Kubinyi “Wondering Pathways Toward Community-Based Service Designing from Rõuge” (supervisor Associate Prof. Josina Vink).

Abstract

The Dominant Service Design phenomenon overemphasis step-by-step procedures led by design experts. While community-based design approaches exist, these strategies overlook the everyday struggle of detaching from modernist design legacies. Without a clearer understanding of how to move toward community-based modalities, the profession risks erasing otherness. Drawing on a nine-month programmatic research-through-design project in South-Eastern Estonia, this paper conceptualizes wondering pathways—simultaneous yet contradictory movements toward community-based practices. This research contributes to service design by demonstrating multiple directions to community-based approaches and building compassion for messy in-between spaces of transformation. Moving toward community-based approaches requires ongoing openness to resisting dominant design practices that often reveal themselves gradually and through practice.

15.45 Aman Asif “Beyond the Visible Spectrum: Algal Entanglements” (supervisor Prof. Kärt Ojavee).

Abstract

Positioned within a more-than-human design framework, this research asks: how might designers attune to microbial others (algal) through creative practices to explore conditions and values for multispecies thriving? This presentation focuses on insights developed from practice-led research analysing my design works from the peer review exhibition Algal Phycosphere. The findings are grounded in reflection-on-action to surface methods and considerations that are relevant for practicing attunement to microbes and designing with living systems. The analysis was conducted on eleven design works using guided questions along with written reflections to identify key themes. The research contributes to relational approaches and developing ethics for multispecies thriving in more-than-human design contexts.

16.20 Coffee break

Panel 3: Architecture & Urban Planning
Moderator Dr. Eik Hermann

16.40 Alvin Järving “The Value-Space of Extending Building Lifespans: Locating Architectural Practice in a Conflicted Field” (supervisor Dr. Siim Tuksam).

Abstract

This paper articulates the value-space of extending building lifespans and opens up positioning architectural creative practice within an interdisciplinary field of longevity. Building longevity is not a singular concept but a contested domain where legal, constructional, cultural, and urban values intersect. Moreover, architecture and buildings are not synonymous: discourses on design, reuse, adaptation, and preservation overlap and often conflict within a broad conceptual field. Through a structured literature review, the paper systematizes key concepts, terms and ideas related to building lifespan across architecture and adjacent disciplines to a conceptual map. The framework clarifies how architects can locate their practice within this field and identify operative vectors of agency through design decisions.

17.15 Jaak-Adam Looveer “Urban Planning in the Comfort Zone: The Case of Tallinn” (supervisors Dr. Siim Tuksam, Dr. Priit-Kalev Parts).

17.50 Roundtable: Dr. Eik Hermann, Prof. Andres Kurg, Prof. Linda Kaljundi, Dr. Jaana Päeva

Contact:

Aljona Gineiko aljona.gineiko@artun.ee

Ragne Soosalu ragne.soosalu@artun.ee

Posted by Triin Männik — Permalink

01.03.2026 — 31.03.2026

Natalia Mirzoyan’s exhibition “Winter in March”

Animation

On March 1st, Natalia Mirzoyan’s exhibition “Winter in March” will be opened in Telliskivi Container Gallery.

The art exhibition Winter in March is inspired by the short animated film Winter in March, created at the Estonian Academy of Arts and produced by film studio Rebel Frame. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2025 and has since won nearly twenty international awards at animation and film festivals around the world. It also received the Estonian Cultural Endowment’s annual award for Best Animated Film of 2025.

The exhibition expands the poetic and political world created in the film, exploring helplessness and existential fear experienced by individuals living under a repressive regime. The film tells the true story of a young couple from St. Petersburg, Kirill and Dasha. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shakes their lives. Dasha finds the strength to protest, while Kirill withdraws into himself, sinking deeper and deeper into depression. They decide to leave their homeland and set off for Georgia. The journey is metaphysical the train travels along the Russian-Ukrainian border, where the landscape outside the window is filled with symbols of war. Meanwhile, fellow passengers behave as if nothing is happening. Through snowstorms and fear, the most painful moment arrives at the border: will they be allowed to continue? Although they eventually reach Georgia, their greatest fear catches up with them in another way — from an unexpected place.

The exhibition offers visitors the opportunity to immerse themselves in this world of imagery and emotional associations. The space is designed as a journey, leading the viewer from intimate memory fragments into a broader political and poetic dimension. The aim of the exhibition is to create an immersive experience that connects the film and the exhibition into one whole. It is also important to provide the audience with an opportunity to perceive the personal and collective experiences of war, repression, and migration, and thereby initiate discussion about democracy, memory, and resistance.

Artist Natalia Mirzoyan
Curator Santa Zukker
Artist Team: Rebecca Kruus, Alexander Toodu, Kadi Rebane, Annaliisa Lepik, Katrina Oll, Marina Hirv, Dashka Dementeva, Saskia Sikk

Posted by Andres Lõo — Permalink

Natalia Mirzoyan’s exhibition “Winter in March”

Sunday 01 March, 2026 — Tuesday 31 March, 2026

Animation

On March 1st, Natalia Mirzoyan’s exhibition “Winter in March” will be opened in Telliskivi Container Gallery.

The art exhibition Winter in March is inspired by the short animated film Winter in March, created at the Estonian Academy of Arts and produced by film studio Rebel Frame. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2025 and has since won nearly twenty international awards at animation and film festivals around the world. It also received the Estonian Cultural Endowment’s annual award for Best Animated Film of 2025.

The exhibition expands the poetic and political world created in the film, exploring helplessness and existential fear experienced by individuals living under a repressive regime. The film tells the true story of a young couple from St. Petersburg, Kirill and Dasha. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shakes their lives. Dasha finds the strength to protest, while Kirill withdraws into himself, sinking deeper and deeper into depression. They decide to leave their homeland and set off for Georgia. The journey is metaphysical the train travels along the Russian-Ukrainian border, where the landscape outside the window is filled with symbols of war. Meanwhile, fellow passengers behave as if nothing is happening. Through snowstorms and fear, the most painful moment arrives at the border: will they be allowed to continue? Although they eventually reach Georgia, their greatest fear catches up with them in another way — from an unexpected place.

The exhibition offers visitors the opportunity to immerse themselves in this world of imagery and emotional associations. The space is designed as a journey, leading the viewer from intimate memory fragments into a broader political and poetic dimension. The aim of the exhibition is to create an immersive experience that connects the film and the exhibition into one whole. It is also important to provide the audience with an opportunity to perceive the personal and collective experiences of war, repression, and migration, and thereby initiate discussion about democracy, memory, and resistance.

Artist Natalia Mirzoyan
Curator Santa Zukker
Artist Team: Rebecca Kruus, Alexander Toodu, Kadi Rebane, Annaliisa Lepik, Katrina Oll, Marina Hirv, Dashka Dementeva, Saskia Sikk

Posted by Andres Lõo — Permalink

06.03.2026 — 22.03.2026

Young Sculptor Prize Exhibition 2026 | Metamorphosis

Faculty of Fine Arts

Artists: Rover Indigo Bertels-Andréa, Þórey Björk Halldórsdóttir, Denis Kudrjašov, Ivor Mikker, Daniil Musesovs, Elise Marie Olesk, Kertu Rannula, Lotta Karoliina Räsänen, Éric-Olivier Thériault, Kail Timusk, Lume Tuum, Elo Vahtrik, Ats-Anton Varustin, Maria Wrang-Rasmussen

Metamorphosis – simultaneous disintegration and formation; melting, bending, flowing, estrangement from function.

Emerging sculpture explores transformation, transitions, and continuous, uncertain in-between states – in the body, in material, and in space. Traditional techniques and materials encounter synthetic, industrial, and technological elements, generating tension between the organic and the artificial, the rural and the urban, the past and the present.

The works address questions of perception and adaptation: how to find direction in fog, in subterranean layers, or within internal transformations? How do we orient ourselves in a world where the visible is no longer the primary source of knowledge? Can disintegration and fading serve as prerequisites for creation and becoming? What role do ritual, tradition, and vanishing skills play in a technologically charged everyday life? Where does the body end and the environment begin – or does such a boundary still exist?

Established in 2012, the award aims to highlight and recognize emerging sculptors and installation artists currently pursuing their studies. The exhibition presents works created during the 2025/26 academic year by the 14 shortlisted artists. The exhibition is organized by the Sculpture and Installation Department of the Estonian Academy of Arts. A Grand Prix as well as second and third prizes will be awarded.

The exhibition is open to visitors at ARS Project Space from 7–22 March, 12:00–18:00. At the opening of NSPN on 6 March at 4:00 PM, the Grand Prix as well as the 2nd and 3rd prizes will be awarded. A special prize will also be presented by the Estonian Association of Young Contemporary Art.

Exhibition team: Laura Põld, Kirke Kangro, Taavi Talve, Visa Nurmi, Eva Mahhov

Supported by: Estonian Cultural Endowment, Estonian Academy of Arts, Estonian Artists’ Association, Põhjala, Vaskjala Creative Residency

Special thanks: Kunst.ee magazine, ARS Project Space

Posted by Andres Lõo — Permalink

Young Sculptor Prize Exhibition 2026 | Metamorphosis

Friday 06 March, 2026 — Sunday 22 March, 2026

Faculty of Fine Arts