Pre-review of Kadri Liis Rääk exhibition

On April 16 at 11.00 Kadri Liis Rääk’s second peer-reviewed exhibition “Morphogenesis”, will take place in the ARS Project Space, Pärnu mnt 154.

The exhibition’s peer reviewers are Dr. Erik Alalooga and Professor Esa Kirkkopelto.
The supervisor of the doctoral thesis is Dr. Liina Unt.

The second creative project is part of Kadri Liis Rääk’s doctoral thesis, “Touch and Tactility as a Means for Shared Immersion in Art” which focuses on embodied, multisensory experiences within the exhibition context. Using methods of expanded scenography, Rääk explores how to create immersive spaces for alternative encounters through interactive bodily sculptures, atmospheric mood, and tactility. Through sculptures grounded in her own bodily experiences, Rääk examines the singularity of experience and the boundaries of self and the Other. She is initerested in what beliefs and values are carried with oneself and the surrounding world, and how these are expressed through the experience of touch.

Kadri Liis Rääk is a multidisciplinary artist and researcher, focusing on creating immersive and tactile environments. Operating simultaneously in the expanded fields of art and design, she investigates how tactile interactions with artworks shift perceptions and foster dialogues extending beyond the visible. She studied scenography (BA) and contemporary art (MA) at the Estonian Academy of Arts and autonomous design (MA) at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent (KASK, Belgium). Her works engage with bodily and symbolic narratives, addressing entanglements and dialogues between humans and other life forms. She has participated in exhibitions and residencies in Peru, Czech Republic, Belgium, Denmark, Iceland, and Estonia.

We look forward to seeing you at the opening of the CTC – Climate Truth Crisis exhibition on 11.04, at 14:00, in the open area in front of the Estonian Academy of Arts (Põhja pst 7).

The CTC – Climate Truth Crisis project deals with the spread of misinformation and understanding the climate crisis. The project involves educating young designers in these areas, creating a website that gathers information about the topic, publishing a podcast series, a dictionary and a collection of articles. In addition, students are visualizing the topic in various media. More information on the project website: https://www.climatetruthcrisis.eu/

The first workshop of the project will take place at the Estonian Academy of Arts on 7-11 April, during which students will write down concepts related to the topic, visualize them and on Friday, 11 April, open an exhibition in a public space in front of the EKA to introduce the topic to a wider audience.

The workshop is held in cooperation with the EKA Graphic Design Department and the Department of Semiotics of the University of Tartu. The students will be supervised by semioticians, conspiracy theory and disinformation researchers Mari-Liis Madisson and Daniel Tamm, Laura Vilbiks from the Estonian Foundation for Nature (ELF), and graphic designers Laura Merendi, Ott Kagovere and Kert Viiart. In addition to the supervisors, there will be students and lecturers from Bosnia, Spain, the Netherlands, England, Iceland and Lithuania.

In addition to the workshop, there will also be lectures open to the wider audience:

09.04, 16:00, A502 (EKA, Põhja pst 7)
Artist Kristina Õllek with a presentation Absorbing Hypoxic Water

10.04, 16:00, A300 (EKA, Põhja pst 7)
Graphic designer Maria Muuk with a presentation Graphic Design as a Degrowth Practice

The project will last for three years, 2025-2028, and workshops will be held at various partner universities:

Academy of Fine Arts Sarajevo,

Estonian Academy of Arts,

ELISAVA,

Iceland University of the Arts,

Royal Academy of Art, The Hague,

University of the Arts London,

Vilnius Academy of Arts

The 2025 Spring semester session of the Open Lectures ”City as novel ecosystem” focuses on landscape architecture and, more specifically, urban nature. 

The lecture series is being put together by landscape architects Karin Bachmann, Merle Karro-Kalberg and Anna-Liisa Unt, who have co-founded and edited the landscape architecture magazine ÕU for 7 years and are currently leading the project “Curated Biodiversity”, which experiments with ways to make urban landscaping more diverse as an environment. Therefore, the open lectures in the spring will also turn their attention to the quality of the space between buildings and, using the speakers’ words and creations, show how to make the city more biodiverse and enjoyable and how people and other species that call the city their home can live in symbiosis.

On April 24 at 6 pm, Penfornis will take the stage in the EKA auditorium to introduce the 20-year practice of the landscape architecture office Taktyk, share the outcomes of he enquiries through design, point at critical future directions.

From Rotterdam to Barcelona, from Paris to Brussels and more lately Zurich, the practice Taktyk has since 2005, been envisaged as an evolving entity, adaptive and responsive to new heterogeneous and complex challenges. For the last 20 years Taktyk acts as a conductor, curator, and mediator of transformation processes using tacit knowledge of gardening, bricolage and painting. The lecture will highlight the emergence and evolution of our voice in the field and how we envision its future.

Taktyk is a landscape architecture office based in Paris and Brussels that experiments with introducing lush plant communities into existing spatial situations. The contrast between the natural and the built environment becomes very visible in their works, because special attention is given to creating new spatial quality that arises from the overlap between the two. New environments are always born from coworking with future users.

The lectures are intended for all disciplines, not only for students and professionals in the field of architecture.

All lectures are held on Thursdays at 6 pm in the EKA main auditorium. All lectures are in English and free of charge.

Schedule of the Spring 2025 lectures:

March 27. Toposcape:

April 3. Ingo Kowarik

April 10. Jan van Schaik

April 24. Taktyk

Within the framework of a series of open lectures, the Faculty of Architecture of EKA presents a dozen unique practitioners and valued theorists in the field in Tallinn every academic year.

The lecture series is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

www.avatudloengud.ee

SILICATE ONTOLOGY I. A material and social history 1900-2025
EKA Gallery 11.–27.04.2025
Opening: 11.04.2025 at 6pm
Open Tue–Sat 12–6 pm Sun 12–4 pm, free entry

Silicate embodies the evolution of 20th-century Estonian architecture. Among the few widely available materials during Soviet deficits, silicate played a crucial role in shaping both monumental and everyday architecture – from the heyday of functionalist villas to self-built garages, from standardised apartment buildings to military infrastructure.

Through a kaleidoscopic lens, the exhibition marries perspectives from material science, architectural history, and cultural anthropology to critically examine the contested status of silicate and its potential for future application. Interwoven throughout are the insights of alumni and research conducted by students and scholars of the Estonian Academy of Arts.

In an era of increasing resource constraints, the exhibition invites viewers to consider whether, and how, material contaminated by Soviet association can be reborn anew.

Curated by: Henri Kopra ja Iiris Tähti Toom (Spatialist Studio)
Technical support: Erik Hõim

The exhibition is supported by the Estonian Association of Architects, the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Tallinn City, Bauroc and Sadolin Estonia.
Opening drinks from Põhjala Brewery.

Maria Lalou & Skafte Aymo-Boot
→ Lecture performance: [UN]FINISHED
→ Screening: Barbaresou Legacy, or The Cursed One, 2024
→ Book presentation: [UN]FINISHED – Atlas of Athens’ Incomplete Buildings – A Story of Hidden Antimonuments (Jam Sam Books, 2023)

The architectural archetype of the unfinished concrete building can be found everywhere in the Athenian cityscape. Those structures, left in the middle of a discontinued building process in a seemingly never-ending pause, are signs of invisible financial and political forces defining the physical appearance of the city. With its character of a ruin of a forgotten purpose the unfinished building is at the same time pointing to the past and to the future, as a frozen moment of time preserved ever since its volume reached that concrete state. The unfinished concrete skeletons of Athens are keepers of stories that are evidence of unseen structures that form the Greek society: family, bureaucracy, and finance. The work of Lalou & Aymo-Boot makes apparent how these ever-present factors continuously influence the everyday of the city and its inhabitants.

The full story of Barbaresou Legacy, or The Cursed One is included as one of the chapters in the book [UN]FINISHED – Atlas of Athens’ Incomplete Buildings – A Story of Hidden Antimonuments by Maria Lalou & Skafte Aymo-Boot, published in 2023 by Jap Sam Books.

Maria Lalou is a Greek conceptual sculptor and experimental filmmaker. Her work focuses on the politics of the viewer in the form of installations, performances, filmic documents and publications. She has presented her work internationally in exhibitions, screenings and lectures and published two monographs: [theatro] (Onomatopee, 2015) and the camera (Dolce Publications, 2019).

Skafte Aymo-Boot is a Danish architect with an independent design and research practice. He has realised a variety of permanent and temporary works in Europe and Asia, many of which are the result of collaborations with artists operating in the overlap between architecture and visual art. He is also a partner at the architectural office OP – Open Platform in Copenhagen.

Since 2012, Lalou & Aymo-Boot have worked together on [UN]FINISHED, their continuous research on the unfinished concrete buildings of Athens. In 2020, they founded cross section archive in Athens, a space for art and architecture, exploring urban phenomena that occur in the intersection of those disciplines and how historical facts, political structures and everyday circumstances have been interfering with, forming, and directing them. They curate an annual thematic program of research and exhibitions, inviting artists, architects and thinkers to collectively investigate and expand the theme at stake, and publish the zine Document.

Contemporary Art and Context is a lecture series hosted by MA Contemporary Art and features talks by artists, curators, and researchers, offering diverse perspectives on contemporary art practices and their societal contexts.

The lecture takes place in English, everyone is welcome to join!

The 2025 spring semester session of the Open Lectures “City as Novel Ecosystem” focuses on landscape architecture, specifically the interaction of the city, people and nature. In connection with the EKA doctoral school conference taking place on April 10, the lecture series will include a lecture by one of the seminar’s keynote speakers on the meaning of research methods.

On April 10 at 6 pm, Dr. Jan van Schaik will give an open lecture “The work is the Knowledge” in the EKA main auditorium.

Jan van Schaik will discuss the productive conflict inherent in reflective practice research – namely that there are both benefits and detriments to halting the flow-state of creating to critically observe that same act of creating. And he will discuss how reflective practice research is bound to a networked community of practice, and how defining and owning this binding is critical to a practitioner making a case for the existence of an original contribution to knowledge in their own work.

Dr Jan van Schaik is an artist and architect based in Melbourne. He is the director of MvS Architects, a researcher and PhD supervisor at RMIT Architecture & Urban Design, founder of +Concepts creative practice presentation and performance series, author of the Lost Tablets artwork series, and the design director of creative sector strategy and advocacy consultancy Future Tense. Making art about architecture, and vice versa, Jan is engaged in the governance and communities of both.

The lectures are intended for all disciplines, not only for students and professionals in the field of architecture.

All lectures are held on Thursdays at 6 pm in the EKA main auditorium. All lectures are in English and free of charge.

Schedule of the Spring 2025 lectures:

March 27. Toposcape: Justyna Dziedziejko & Magdalena Wnęk 

April 3. Ingo Kowarik

April 10. Jan van Schaik

April 24. Taktyk

Within the framework of a series of open lectures, the Faculty of Architecture of EKA presents a dozen unique practitioners and valued theorists in the field in Tallinn every academic year.

www.avatudloengud.ee

The lecture series is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

Lecture by Dr. Jan van Schaik will be held in cooperation with the Estonian Doctoral School for Engineering and Technology. Project “Cooperation between universities to promote doctoral studies” (2021-2027.4.04.24-0003) is co-funded by the European Union.

Ingel Vaikla: You Have Become the Space – Cross-Disciplinary Translation Between ‘the Built’ and ‘the Displayed’

Artist and filmmaker Ingel Vaikla talks about her PhD research in Arts You Have Become the Space – Cross-Disciplinary Translation Between ‘the Built’ and ‘the Displayed’ that investigates modernist architectural environments, their role in fostering strong communities, and the representational strategy which conveys the existential dimension of a place. Drawing from literary translation theory, this research employs cross-disciplinary translation to transfer the formal, sensorial, historical, and conceptual characteristics of built environments into moving image practice. This approach encourages an understanding of space not merely as a subject but as an active metaphor for sociopolitical dynamics, where architecture represents past ideologies and community embodies contemporary values.

Ingel Vaikla (1992, Tallinn) is a visual artist and filmmaker based in Brussels, working primarily with video, 16mm film, and found footage. Her artistic practice explores the representation of architecture through its relationship with communities, seeking a visual language that goes beyond observing architecture as a sculptural form. Instead, she aims to convey the existential, conceptual, and ideological qualities that spaces embody. Ingel is a former resident of the HISK postgraduate program (2018–2019) and WIELS Contemporary Art Centre (2021) and is currently in the end phase of pursuing her PhD at PXL-MAD/UHasselt. Her audiovisual works, including The House Guard, Roosenberg, Double Exposure, Papagalo, What’s the Time?, EUR42 and Moi aussi, je regarde have been screened internationally at film festivals and art institutions such as IDFA in Amsterdam, Kunsthalle Wien, EKKM in Tallinn, Beursschouwburg and Bozar in Brussels, Manifesta 13 in Marseille, Videonale in Bonn, Tramway in Glasgow, the European Media Art Festival in Osnabrück, and the Busan International Video Art Festival, among others.

Contemporary Art and Context is a lecture series hosted by MA Contemporary Art and features talks by artists, curators, and researchers, offering diverse perspectives on contemporary art practices and their societal contexts.

The lecture takes place in English, everyone is welcome to join!

In this public talk, Victoria Donovan will introduce how decolonial thinking has informed her research and projects, as well as her new book Life in Spite of Everything: Tales from the Ukrainian East (2025). Life in Spite of Everything is a cultural portrait of Ukraine’s east before it was devastated by Russia’s full-scale invasion. It is a history on foot through the beautiful Donbas region, a celebration of its past and present, and its people’s tenacity, creativity and independence. Victoria will discuss the book in conversation with the historian and curator Linda Kaljundi (Estonian Academy of Arts). 

Victoria Donovan is a Professor of Ukrainian and East European Studies and the Director of the Centre for Global (Post)socialisms at the University of St Andrews. She works at the intersection of heritage studies, urban history, visual anthropology, and the public humanities. She is the co-producer of academic research, literature, exhibitions, archives, community workshops, and artistic practice exploring the industrial history and heritage of eastern Ukraine and the UK. She is the author of Chronicles in Stone: Preservation, Patriotism, and Identity in Northwest Russia (2019); Limits of Collaboration: Art, Ethics, and Donbas (2022); and Life in Spite of Everything: Tales from the Ukrainian East (2025).

Lecture will be held in cooperation of Institute of Art History and Visual Culture and Estonian Doctoral School for Humanities and Arts Project “Cooperation between universities to promote doctoral studies” (2021-2027.4.04.24-0003) is co-funded by the European Union.

Kadri Liis Rääk, “Morphogenesis” 
Opening: April 4, 2025, at 18:00 
04.04.–20.04.2025
Open Mon–Sun, 12–18
ARS Project Space, Pärnu mnt. 154, Tallinn

Kadri Liis Rääk presents an immersive exhibition at ARS Project Space that explores multisensory encounters between space and the body.

“Morphogenesis” functions as a poetic ecosystem, offering opportunities for embodied interaction. The exhibition reveals metamorphoses of the creative process—transformations of materials that have taken shape through the artist’s sensitive, persistent handiwork. This method is morphogenetic, a process of giving form to ideas, creating and transforming materials, similar to biological processes and life cycles. Combining natural and synthetic matter and merging ancient craft techniques with contemporary practices, the artist creates a timeless space to contemplate relationships between mental, physical, and social realms. How do we perceive ourselves when faced with the boundaries between self and the Other? What beliefs and values shape our relationship with the environment and those around us?

Displayed sketches, drawings, and sculptures visualize the artist’s thought processes and express personal bodily experiences. The exhibition intertwines found materials, soft and rigid sculptures, creative residues, and old works reinterpreted alongside new pieces, layering new meanings. “Morphogenesis” serves as a refuge for sensitive organisms, inspired by spatial experiences from Icelandic and Peruvian landscapes as well as the forests of Hiiumaa.

Kadri Liis Rääk is a multidisciplinary artist and researcher, focusing on creating immersive and tactile environments. Operating simultaneously in the expanded fields of art and design, she investigates how tactile interactions with artworks shift perceptions and foster dialogues extending beyond the visible. She studied scenography (BA) and contemporary art (MA) at the Estonian Academy of Arts and autonomous design (MA) at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent (KASK, Belgium). Her works engage with bodily and symbolic narratives, addressing entanglements and dialogues between humans and other life forms. She has participated in exhibitions and residencies in Peru, Czech Republic, Belgium, Denmark, Iceland, and Estonia.

Sound design: Ekke Västrik

Special thanks: Raimond Põldmaa, Marika Agu, Kerli Praks, Siim Toomet, Liina Unt, Kristjan Vahtra 

The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia and the Estonian Artists’ Association