GD Exhibition “Cabinet of Curiosities from Mythonia”

Berit Kaschan will lead a thematic writing course for three times at Maret Sarapu’s exhibition ‘Free and Held’.

The workshop is available for preregistration and will take place on three consecutive Tuesdays – 14.02, 21.02. ja 28.02. kell 18.00–20.00.

Please register for the course by filling the form on the previous Sunday prior to the course at the latest. The participation fee is 10 euros. The group size is limited to 10 participants. The workshop is held in Estonian.

Berit Kaschan will lead a thematic writing course for three times at Maret Sarapu’s exhibition ‘Free and Held’.

The workshop is available for preregistration and will take place on three consecutive Tuesdays – 14.02, 21.02. ja 28.02. kell 18.00–20.00.

Please register for the course by filling the form on the previous Sunday prior to the course at the latest. The participation fee is 10 euros. The group size is limited to 10 participants. The workshop is held in Estonian.

Berit Kaschan will lead a thematic writing course for three times at Maret Sarapu’s exhibition ‘Free and Held’.

The workshop is available for preregistration and will take place on three consecutive Tuesdays – 14.02, 21.02. ja 28.02. kell 18.00–20.00.

Please register for the course by filling the form on the previous Sunday prior to the course at the latest. The participation fee is 10 euros. The group size is limited to 10 participants. The workshop is held in Estonian.

MARET SARAPU
FREE AND HELD
08.02.–04.03.2023
Draakoni gallery 
 
Curators: Kaisa Maasik and Berit Kaschan
Graphic design: Pamela Sume

On Tuesday, 7 February at 18.00 Maret Sarapu opens her solo exhibition Free and Held at Draakoni gallery. The exhibition is open until 4 March.

Maret Sarapu’s seventh solo exhibition looks at the question of how to be free and held. Through five artworks, the artist maps quotidian rituals and symbols, activities and stories that help to ensure our mental sharpness, emotional well-being and a sense of safety in everyday life. That is, focal points that help us make sense of life, prevent crises and find strength in the everyday.

The conceptual centre of the exhibition is simultaneously poetic and practical – on the one side, it allows the viewer to make their own everyday life more poetic and start consciously and playfully mapping out activities, events and ideas that provide support and strength. On the other side, this kind of poetisation has a thoroughly practical effect – conceptualisation and structuring of our routines grounds us and plays a significant role in achieving emotional well-being and maintaining our joie de vivre.

At the exhibition, the artist displays installations and objects: wall panels with nature motifs, mosaic trophies, glass “breaths” and sand boxes reminiscent of Japanese gardens on walls and around the exhibition space. Alongside these objects, the exhibition includes a set of postcards, inviting the viewer to discover their own everyday and internal landscapes through exercises of creative writing.

As part of Free and Held three thematic creative writing workshops led by Berit Kaschan will take place at Draakoni gallery. The workshops will be held on three consecutive Tuesdays – on 14, 21 and 28 February from 18.00 to 20.00.

Pre-registration is required.
Please register to the workshop no later than 12 February: kaisamaasik@gmail.com.

Participation fee: 10€.
Size of the group: 10 participants.
The workshop will be conducted in Estonian.

The exhibition is supported by the Estonian Ministry of Culture, the Cultural Endowment of Estonia and Liviko AS.

Thank you: Karel Koplimets, Maarin Ektermann and Prologue School, Sven Sapelson, Tiina Sarapu, Kairi Orgusaar, Kaie Vakepea

Maret Sarapu (1978) is an artist based in Tallinn. She has graduated from the Department of Glass Art at the Estonian Academy of Arts (BA 2002, MA 2005) and taken part in numerous courses and art residencies both in Estonia and abroad. In her work, Sarapu is mostly inspired by everyday life and often uses nature motifs and repetition. Recently, her experiments with form and concept have led her towards methods like automatic and stream of consciousness writing. Often, the aim is to achieve mental well-being and find harmony between intelligence and emotions. Her alternating process (thinking, writing, working in the studio) and collaboration with material lead to results that give both the artist and the viewer a possibility to make conclusions and generalisations.

Group exhibition ‘The Weak Fins of My Few Skills’

Pärnu City Gallery
Uus tn 4, Pärnu
2.–25.02.2023

The opening of the group exhibition ‘The Weak Fins of My Few Skills’ will take place on Wednesday, February 1st at 18.00 at Pärnu City Gallery.

The group exhibition ‘The Weak Fins of My Few Skills’ doesn’t seek to give an exhaustive answer to the question of how to live. Rather, it tries its best not to sink while exercising empathy towards its favorite subject – the “water”. According to David Foster Wallace’s famous speech ‘This Is Water’, the “water” in the parable above means nothing more than the most obvious and important realities of our existence, which are nonetheless the hardest to see and talk about. To avoid becoming a living corpse in the daily grind, one must manage the hard-wired human setting of seeing oneself as the center of the world and actively choose to think differently. To choose to look at the “water” anew.

Participating artists: Laura De Jaeger, Joosep Kivimäe, Johannes Luik, Kaisa Maasik, Tiiu Maasik, Eva Mustonen and Mathias Väärsi
Project manager: Elo Meier
Graphic design: Pamela Sume

Supporters: Eesti Kultuurkapitali kujutava ja rakenduskunsti sihtkapital ja Pärnumaa ekspertgrupp, Jaanihanso Siidrivabrik, PERI AS, Pizzakiosk, Pärnu Linn

We thank: Estonia Medical Spa & Hotel, Karel Koplimets, Kusja, Mariel Värk, Nienke Fransen, Pärnu Jahtklubi, Villa Wesset

EKA’s Sensorial Design Research group is organizing a design research event at the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA) aiming to bring knowledge of international researchers to students, researchers, and educators of EKA on the 21st of February 2023.

During this event, two Art and Design PhD students of EKA, Arife Dila Demir and Nesli Hazal Oktay, welcome their peer reviewers and external PhD supervisors to EKA as speakers. Four speakers present their design research work, inviting the audience to discussion. The event is open to the public with a requirement to register. 

It is possible to participate both on-site at EKA (room A101) and watch the broadcast http://tv.artun.ee/.

Schedule (All times are Estonian) 

10:30 – 10:45 – Coffee

10:45 – 11:00 – Welcoming words

11:00 – 11:30 – Hsuan-Hsiu Hung, Estonian Academy of Arts

11:30 – 12:00 – Verena Fuchsberger, University of Salzburg, Austria

12:00 – 12:30 – Panel discussion: Hsuan-Hsiu Hung & Verena Fuchsberger, Moderator: Nesli Hazal Oktay

12:30 – 14:00 – Break for Lunch

14:00 – 14:30 – Claudia Núñez-Pacheco, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden

14:30 – 15:00 – Nithikul Nimkulrat, OCAD University, Canada

15:00 – 15:30 – Panel discussion: Claudia Núñez-Pacheco & Nithikul Nimkulrat, Moderator: Arife Dila Demir

The presenters: 

Hsuan-Hsiu Hung is a movement and dance artist from Taiwan. Her creative practice weaves together Qigong, somatics, visual art, contemplative practices and contemporary dance. In her creative research, she has been exploring the unfolding experiences of self as well as relationships with others (including the environment) through improvisational movement and dance. Since 2020, she has been invited by Mind and Life Europe to organise European Summer Research Institute and co-facilitate contemplative movement practices with philosophers, neuroscientists, researchers and contemplative practitioners in the Buddhist tradition. Currently, she is also a research assistant at the Faculty of Design of the Estonian Academy of Arts.

️Verena Fuchsberger is a Postdoc at the Center for Human-Computer Interaction, University of Salzburg. She has completed her Master’s Degree in Educational Sciences and Psychology at the University of Innsbruck and finished her PhD in HCI at the University of Salzburg. Some of her recent publications include “Heterogeneity in making: Findings, approaches, and reflections on inclusivity in making and makerspaces” (with D. Smit, N. França, C. Gerdenitsch, O. Jaques, J. Kowolik, G. Regal, and E. Roodbergen in Frontiers in Human Dynamics, 2023).

️Claudia Núñez-Pacheco is an interaction design researcher and artist, currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at both the division of Media Technology and Interaction Design and Digital Futures at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. She holds a PhD and a Master’s degree from the Sydney School of Design at the University of Sydney, in the area of interaction design. Her research investigates how bodily self-awareness can be used as a tool for human self-discovery as well as a generative crafting material for the design of aesthetic experiences.

️Nithikul Nimkulrat is a textile artist, designer, researcher, and educator originally from Bangkok, Thailand. Nithikul was educated as an industrial designer (BID) with knowledge of architectural design at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. Having worked as a designer in the textile industry in Thailand for three years, she relocated to Helsinki to pursue studies at Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture where she earned a Master of Arts in textile art and design in 2002 and a Doctor of Arts in design in 2009. Currently, she is the Acting Chair of the Material Art & Design program.

Read more about Sensorial Design here 

REGISTER HERE

The pop-up exhibition opened at NART on 21st of January investigates the possibilities of including the body and related identity markers (age, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, social class, etc.) in the creative process.

The display is the outcome of the “Body & Identity”  course run at the Design Department at the Estonian Academy of Arts in autumn 2022. The students were guided through several layers, or membranes, as we called them,  determining one’s identity, from body and gender up to our contemporary identities in the digital realm.

By actively combining theory, workshops and personal practice, the students were familiarised with how identity-related categories, whether as culturally constructed and historically changing phenomenons or quests for personal style, could be inscribed in and communicated through design and/or arts. Working with relevant literature and constant analysis led to various projects in which the students explored how their favoured medium could be expressed via the given subject matter.

Artists: Karolin Kärm, Rita RebaineLonks, Otto Antson, Kadri Vahar, Epp Vislapuu, Katrin-Maria Terras, Ieva Laskevičiūtė (LTU), Matthieu Champion (FRA)

Curators: Annamari Vänskä (FIN), Piret Puppart

Anders Härm, PhD candidate of the Estonian Academy of Arts, curriculum of Art History and Visual Culture, will defend his thesis „Disobedient Bodies. The Radical Performative Practices in Art and Culture of the 20th and 21st Centuries“ on 21st of February 2023 at 15.30 at Põhja pst 7, room A501.
The defense can be watched in EKA TV.

External reviewers: Dr. Madli Pesti (Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre), Dr. Jaak Tomberg (University of Tartu).
Opponent: Dr. Madli Pesti

The defense will be held in Estonian.

Members of the Defence Committee: Prof. Krista Kodres, Prof. Virve Sarapik, Dr. Anu Allas, Dr. Anneli Randla, Dr. Luule Epner, Prof. Marek Tamm, Prof. Eneken Laanes.

Please find the PhD thesis HERE.