Calendar

Asmus Soodla
“Tool Room, Gallery”
EKA Gallery 4.–26.04.2026
Open Tue–Sat 12–6 pm Sun 12–4 pm, free entry (NB! EKA Gallery is closed on Good Friday, April 3 and Easter Sunday, April 5!)
Opening: Thursday, April 2 at 6 pm
Guided tours: Fri, April 10 at 1 pm (est) / Sun, April 12 at 2.30 pm (est) / Sun, April 12 at 3.30 pm (eng)

Asmus Soodla’s exhibition “Tool Room, Gallery” focuses on the art gallery as an ecosystem, where value-based distinction between the result and the process doesn’t exist. The conceptual starting point of the project is the internal conditions and work processes of the gallery as an institution, as well as its spatial logic. The exhibition focuses on activities that are usually hidden from the visitor’s gaze, but which play a decisive role in how the artwork and the viewer meet.

The project includes a spatial intervention that occupies the entire gallery, highlighting the spaces of EKA Gallery and its contents. The conceptual framework also includes the group exhibition “Field Notes from Immediate Proximity”, the curation of which Soodla entrusted to artist Riin Maide. This role-playing gesture treats the form of collaboration as a separate artwork.

Asmus Soodla (b. 2003) is a Tallinn-based artist and art technician. Soodla’s practice is conceptual and spatially sensitive, often employing sculpture, text, and photography. His work is primarily inspired by the existing environment and objects, unraveling their operational logic and history. Through his installative interventions, invisible systems and traces of human thought are brought into focus. Soodla earned a Bachelor’s degree in Installation and Sculpture (2025) from the Estonian Academy of Arts and completed a preparatory course in architecture and interior design (2022) at the EKA Open Academy. Additionally, he has furthered his studies at artist Simon Starling’s studio in Copenhagen.

Technical support: Mattias Veller
Graphic design: Sunny Lei
The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Tallinn City and Sadolin Estonia.
Opening drinks from mirai™ and Põhjala Brewery.

FIELD NOTES FROM IMMEDIATE PROXIMITY
EKA Gallery storage room 4.–26.04.2026
Open Tue–Sat 12–6 pm Sun 12–4 pm, free entry (NB! EKA Gallery is closed on Good Friday, April 3 and Easter Sunday, April 5!)
Opening: Thursday, April 2 at 6 pm
Guided tours: Fri, April 10 at 1 pm (est) / Sun, April 12 at 2.30 pm (est) / Sun, April 12 at 3.30 pm (eng)

The exhibition “Field Notes from Immediate Proximity” provides an insight into artists’ work and creative spaces. In addition to documenting the studios and homes of six creators, they also become windows into their inner world.

Postcards, tools, potted plants and piles of books that have been captured on the artist’s canvas or photograph, reveal moments from the artists’ everyday lives, from the spaces where the artist spends the most time doing their work – on the one hand, it is an opportunity to see inside the creative processes of contemporary artists, into their different practices, on the other hand, these works are simply interpretations of personal space, ways of seeing everyday life.

The narrow and cramped architecture of EKA Gallery’s storage space brings the viewer closer to the works and their details. Together with the unusual exhibition space, the works form a new spatial whole in which different visual languages ​​and perspectives can meet and merge.

The exhibition was initiated within the conceptual framework of Asmus Soodla’s solo exhibition “Tool Room, Gallery”.

Riin Maide (b. 1997) is an artist and scenographer based in Tallinn, Estonia. Maides practice centers around the connection and comparison of two- and three-dimensional media and creation of staged environments. Maide Maide has obtained a MA degree in scenography (2025) and BA in Graphic Art in the department of graphic art at the Estonian Academy of Arts. In addition, she has studied at the Department of Alternative and Puppet Theater at DAMU in Prague and in the Performative Arts class of Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She has received several scholarships and awards, including the Wiiralt scholarship in 2023 and Young Artist award of Estonian Academy of Arts in 2020.

Artists: Kristi Kongi, Joosep Kivimäe, Ann Pajuväli, Anu Vahtra and Lieven Lahaye, Mattias Veller
Curated by: Riin Maide
Technical support: Mattias Veller
Graphic design: Sunny Lei
The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Tallinn City and Sadolin Estonia.
Opening drinks from mirai™ and Põhjala Brewery.

Scenography student Ksenia Verbeštšuk’s solo exhibition at the Roosikrantsi 8b gallery.

Ksenia Verbeštšuk’s exhibition “Keep Me Warm” offers a young artist’s reflection on humanity in the context of today’s anxious and crisis-ridden world. Using a thermal camera as her primary tool, the artist observes how body heat is reflected in space and how it is retained on surrounding surfaces.

What may initially appear to be a technical device reveals itself, through prolonged artistic practice, as unexpectedly poetic—pointing to the fragility of the human body, its sensitivity to the environment, and the need for closeness.

Curator: Ene-Liis Semper
Graphic design: Jan-Markus Maasepp

The exhibition is supported by the Faculty of Fine Arts.

On Thursday, 9 April at 6:00 PM, a duo exhibition On the Verge of Completion by contemporary artists Gerda Hansen and Rebecca Norman will be opened at the Hobusepea Gallery.

The end is actually an unspeakably bleak place where no clear way forward presents itself and nothing no longer seems to lie ahead. The duo exhibition by Gerda Hansen and Rebecca Norman invites the viewer to experience art not only as something definitive, but as a way of becoming. The exhibition reveals the stages of artistic practice that usually remain hidden, offering a chance to step into the moment where a work is born and where meanings have not yet settled.

The exhibition examines the boundaries between completion and incompletion, approaching finality not as a destination, but as a state in which the forward movement is temporarily suspended. The creative process, often shaped by uncertainty, experimentation and internal tension, is usually resolved when the artist decides to declare a work complete. In this exhibition however, the viewer comes into contact with the process rather than the finalised work. The presented works do not conceal their unfinished state. Instead, they emphasise its value. On these canvases, thoughts remain dispersed, forms and tones are still taking shape, and meanings remain open. It is a moment where possibilities remain unended and the potential of the work is still unfolding.

Perhaps completing a work is a merely provisional decision, a pause within an ongoing process? The artist appears here as a practitioner of continuous choices and interruptions, guided by an intuitive and often sensitive self-reflection. Imperfection, repetition and error are not deviations, but integral to the organic nature of making. As Gilles Deleuze suggests, artworks are not defined by what they appear to be at a given moment, but by what they might become. The exhibition offers an insight into the concealed layers of artistic production, presenting the artwork as something that unfolds over time.

In Hansen’s works, layered structures strive toward presence and transparency. Repeating forms and interruptions create a rhythm that does not lead to a solution but instead exposes different stages of the creative process. She is interested in the moment when a work of art dissolves and comes into being at the same time. In Norman’s practice, the notion of completion is examined through its various permutations including the use of unstable colour pigments. For her, the apparent incompleteness of a work is not a deficiency, and the abundance of potential is realised through the material itself. The tension between continuation and completion becomes a deliberately sustained condition, in which the work does not close, but remains in an active and meaningful state of breathing.

Artists                                   

Gerda Hansen (b. 1994) is a contemporary Estonian-based artist whose practice explores the intersections of painting and digital image-making. She holds a BA in painting (2022) and an MA in contemporary art (2025) from the Estonian Academy of Arts. In the current exhibition, Hansen brings together manual processes with AI-based generative systems. Her works emerge through a visual dialogue with the machine in which images remain intentionally ambiguous and leave the attribution of meaning to the viewer. Hansen has exhibited both in Estonia and internationally and is the recipient of the 2023 Adamson-Eric Young Artist Scholarship.

Rebecca Norman (b. 2001) graduated in painting from the Estonian Academy of Arts (2025), while also supplementing her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (2024). Her practice addresses the convergence and misalignment between the author and the material and the resulting dissonant outcomes. Her works often engage with seemingly insignificant moments that call for new forms of categorisation through sustained attention. She is drawn to utilitarian objects that have irreversibly lost their function and various forms of apparent nonsense that mimic purposefulness. Norman has participated in several group exhibitions and received the Endover Prize for her 2025 graduation work Loaded Vacuity.

Curator

Liisi Kõuhkna is a curator and project manager who graduated with a master’s degree in health sciences from the Tallinn University and has also an MA from curatorial studies and a BA in jewellery and blacksmithing from the Estonian Academy of Arts. She has curated contemporary art exhibitions in various galleries in Estonia and abroad. Since March of this year, she works as the gallery assistant for the Estonian Artists’ Association.

Exhibition information

Location: Hobusepea Gallery, Hobusepea 2, Tallinn

Opening: 9.04.2026 from 18:00

Open for visitors: 10.04–10.05.2026,Wed, Fri–Sun 12–18, Thu 12–19

Curator: Liisi Kõuhkna

Graphic design: Helena Pass

Photo documentation: Kail Timusk

Special thanks to: Estonian Artists’ Association, Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Hans-Otto Ojaste, Mari Volens, Märt Vaidla, Paul Aadam Mikson, Jaana Kormašov, family members of the artists, Põhjala Pruulikoda, Nudist Drinks

3rd-year Graphic Art students are showcasing the artists’ book as an independent medium of visual art and an original artwork. The authors draw from personal experiences and memories, exploring themes of physicality, history, and ethical boundaries:

• Aliisa Ahtiainen presents a grandfather’s life story in risography and a “breathing” book inspired by her grandmother’s experience in a tuberculosis sanatorium.
• Jacqueline-Desiree Rosenthal exhibits a piece made of tattooed pigskin rawhide, raising questions about morality and the parallels between animals and humans.
• Olga Dubrovskaja utilizes her background as an intensive care doctor to explore the experience of death through her own and her colleagues’ perspectives. In her second book titled “Delight”, she focuses on the moments of life.
• Adriana Jinmao Biosca Sánchez examines the volatility of memory through materiality and layers of printing.
• Robin August Vöörmann deals with gender identity, drawing parallels with changes in nature.

Supervisors: Eve Kask, Eve Kaaret (binding) and Viktor Gurov. 

Exhibition dates: 6.03.–15.05.2025

EKA library, 6.03.–15.05.2026

Dear friend,

It has been a long time since we last heard from you. Last time we spoke, you were working on some prints in the graphic arts workshop with a roller in your hand and ink on your fingers. How is it going? We would love to see some trials or progress pictures. At the moment we are also in the process of doing some tests. I have added a sample in the envelope. Check it out and tell us what you think!

Let’s keep in touch.

The exhibition shows works from the EKA Print Exchange project initiated by the department of Graphic Art at the Estonian Academy of Arts. Printmaking students from different universities were invited to take part and submit an original print edition. Each print was shipped to Tallinn, sorted and sent back to participants, so everyone received a random selection of ten prints.

The vision of this project was to create new connections between printmaking departments and students through collaboration and sharing physical works. So, we wrote to our penpals and were curious what students of other universities were up to. Depictions of current ideas, projects or any experiments were warmly welcomed as a response.

Four universities participated in the exchange: Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA),
Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO), University of the West of England (UWE), The Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław.

Exhibitions of the Print Exchange have taken place at the universities participating in the exchange, and the first presentation in Estonia took place in June-July 2025 at the TYPA Balcony Gallery in Tartu.

We would like to thank EKA graafika, TYPA, Anna Kodź, Aleksandra Janik and Angie Butler.

Organisers of the EKA Print Exchange: Alona Chuprina, Margarita Feofanova, Chantal Gerschuetz, Merit Himmelreich, Triin Mänd, Helena Pass, Marten Prei, Sandra Puusepp and our supervisor Charlotte Biszewski.

Exhibition design at the EKA library: Sandra Puusepp and Marten Prei. 

On 17 April at 5 PM, the exhibition “Big Hall, Small Town: Postmodernist Cultural Centres in Estonia” will open in the ground-floor foyer of the Paide Music and Theatre House. The exhibition is part of the bachelor’s thesis of Anete Raabe, a student of cultural heritage and conservation at the Estonian Academy of Arts.

The exhibition presents the architecture of 1980s cultural centres and their role in local communities. It focuses on three outstanding examples from the period — the cultural centres in Paide, Põlva, and Lihula — while also examining smaller cultural centres across Estonia that reflect the ideas of the same era.

The exhibition invites visitors to notice these buildings in the urban landscape, appreciate their distinct character, and reflect on their role as focal points of local life.

The exhibition will remain open until 15 May 2026.

ARS Project Space 24.04.–16.05.2026

Opening 23.04.2026 from 6 PM

In May 2025, Jaanika visited the Alps. The landscape dictated the artist to keep her balance, which didn’t allow her to see further than the next slope. It was the low season for tourism, so no ski lifts were operating to ease her journey upward. Jaanika was alone with the mountain, as she continued her way forward. The glacier at the foot of the mountain had melted and in order to come into contact with the ice and snow, she had to climb even higher. This was her first direct encounter with glaciers: until that moment, she had only experienced them through the sounds, videos, literature and photographic material of other authors. All of these contained descriptions of glacial ice, its essence and foreseeable fate. The expansive, solid and mountainous landscape made her feel small. Yet the desire to reach what seemed unattainable remained.

The glacier is considered unpredictable, even dangerous both in real life and as a symbol. It might be seen as the historic archive of atmosphere, giving us hints of past climates and exposing the ways we are all connected to our ancestors and the generations that follow us. We are bound together by a shared destiny and responsibility. We use scientific methods to describe and interpret the mountain, but the actual experience of it might feel sublime and ordinary at the same time.

The glaciologist Jemma Wadham perceives glaciers as characters who have their own personalities and destinies. René Daumal has written about an imaginary expedition to an imaginary mountain, inviting us to interpret it as a symbolic and spiritual journey. Reaching for the sublime is a universal human desire. The mountain climber is not simply a hiker or an adventurer, but a truth seeker whose journey seems almost predestined. In the current exhibition, the mundane is brought together with the divine, the scientific with the sublime.

The exhibition features a large-scale installation, melting ice, ink works on wax paper and a meditative space imbued with John Grzinich’s soundscape. The artist has also inspired students from the Sally Studio Art School located within the ARS Art Factory: under the guidance of Annely Köster six artworks in dialogue with the exhibition were created and will be displayed as a satellite project in the courtyard windows of the Sally Studio Art School. In the framework of the public programme, an artist talk with Jaanika Peerna and the sound artist John Grzinich will take place on 15 May at 5:00 PM, followed by their joint performance at 6:00 PM.

Jaanika Peerna is an Estonian-born artist who lives and works in Estonia, Portugal and New York. For more than a decade, she has dedicated herself to the study of glaciers, working through a vast amount of material about the lifespan and condition of glaciers, while associating it with travelling, philosophy and spiritual ideas. In her artistic practice, she has woven these themes into drawings, installations, videos and performance art. Her performances often engage with the audience, inviting them to reflect upon the ongoing global warming. Peerna’s practice stems from the physical human experience and strives towards a greater awareness of the fragility, interconnectedness and uniqueness of all living things.

She has exhibited her works and given performances around the world. Her last solo exhibition was held in Seoul, Korea. Her works can be found in numerous private collections in Europe and the USA, as well as in public collections, such as the French National Foundation for Contemporary Art.

Curator

Liisi Kõuhkna is a curator and project manager who graduated with a master’s degree in health sciences from the Tallinn University and has also studied in MA programme of curatorial studies at the Estonian Academy of Arts. She has curated contemporary art exhibitions in various galleries in Estonia and abroad. Since March of this year, she works as the gallery assistant for the Estonian Artists’ Association.

Exhibition information

Location: ARS Project Space, Pärnu mnt. 154, Tallinn

Artist talk and performance together with sound artist John Grzinich: 15.05, respectively from 5 PM and from 6 PM

Open for visitors: 24.04.–16.05.2026, Mon–Fri 12–18, Sat 12–16

Curator: Liisi Kõuhkna

Graphic design: Cristopher Siniväli

Photo documentation: Roman-Sten Tõnissoo

Sound design: John Grzinich

Technical support: Aksel Haagensen, Mattias Veller

Special thanks to: Cultural Endowment of Estonia, ARS Art Factory, Estonian Artists’ Association, Merike Hallik, Sandra Sirp, Liis Tedre, Gunnar Kalmet, Agu Peerna, Hannes Egger, Mari Volens, Sally Studio ja Annely Köster

DANCING WITH THE STARS!
EKA Billboard Gallery 16.02.–17.05.2026
Open 24/7, free admission

The exhibition “Dancing with the Stars!” by the 1st year students of graphic design showcases the designed letters and the process of the class Typography I. During 14 weeks, several exercises and experimentations were carried out, drawing was done both by hand and on the computer, using things like stencils, feathers, rocks, nail polish or even keys.

While the first seven weeks were dedicated to experimentation and playing, the last seven focused on creating an entire alphabet and going through the whole letter design process. Vectorised letters were created which in turn were made into working font files during a week-long workshop.

Students: Johannes Adrik, Art Allik, Helen Forsel, Mia Klooren, Art Kruus, Adele Markova, Ischa Mestdagh, Jaako Lauri Puudist, Ann Aotäht Sarv, Mia Greta Sepp,Ariana Sigin, Linnea Süvari, Jakob Tüür, Karol Henrik Vana, Rei Helin Varres
Supervisor: Agnes Isabelle Veevo
Supervisor of the workshop: Patrick Zavadskis

The fonts can be downloaded for free from the SUVA Type Foundry website: suvatypefoundry.ee

SUVA Type Foundry makes the typefaces designed by EKA GD students public.

April 22 – May 23, 2026  

Gallery Pallas

On Wednesday, April 22 at 5:00 PM, Gallery Pallas will host the opening of the joint exhibition “I am Tartu and You are Tallinn,” featuring works by third-year painting students from Pallas University of Applied Sciences (Pallas UAS) and second-year painting students from the Estonian Academy of Arts (EAA). 

Tartu and Tallinn have historically been seen as rivals: Tartu as calm, bohemian, and poetic; Tallinn as the capital – fast-paced, sharp, and trendy. An invisible tension and a quiet struggle are often sensed between the two. This exhibition brings together two schools from these two cities. There was no pre-determined theme, no strict roles, and no binding agenda. Students from EAA and Pallas UAS came together out of a shared interest to see what happens at the intersection of subconscious themes, time-specific emotions, and recurring symbols. 

“I am Tartu and You are Tallinn” is not about opposition, but about overlap. It uses the language of art to show that differences do not disappear; instead, they complement each other. At the same time, it is an invitation to mix identities, allowing one city to dissolve into the other. Once the paint finally reaches the canvas, it no longer matters where you come from. All that remains significant is what is left: the thought, the feeling, the essence, and who you truly are without filters and expectations. 

Exhibition participants from Estonian Academy of Arts: Elise Muchowski, Annette Kits, Anu Jakobson, Karoline Ruusmaa, Kirke Kirt, Esther Borrett, Iris Helme, Madliin Küla, Mia Bianca Kiigemägi. 

From Pallas University of Applied Sciences: Adele Maria Arengu, Elisabet Vasur, Gerli Tafenau, Gerly Piho, Ingrid Janter, Karolin Konrad, Liisa Soolepp, Maria-Netti Purga, ÖÖ.Liibek, Nele Must, Stella Loki Leius, Hedi Kuhi, Helen Lang, Nele Luik, Delfi Oraakel, Luca Fazekas. 

Supervising tutors: Anna Škodenko, Jaan Toomik, Mart Vainre (EAA), Veiko Klemmer, Pille Johanson (Pallas UAS). 

Exhibition team: Eero Alev, Mihkel Ilus, Holger Loodus (EAA), Indrek Aavik (Pallas UAS)

Poster design: ÖÖ.Liibek. 

Press photo: Adele Maria Arengu. Sense of reality. 2026. Oil on canvas. Fragment. Photos by Maria-Netti Purga. 

Maria Izabella Lehtsaar’s solo exhibition In Loving Hands opens on 25 April at 13:00. Drinks for the opening will be provided by Tuletorn Brewery, and the exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

The exhibition is open 26 April – 25 May
Keskpuur Gallery at Central Market, Keldrimäe 9 (2nd floor)

Keskpuur is pleased to present In Loving Hands, a solo exhibition by Maria Izabella Lehtsaar, bringing together experiments with media, commodity fetishism, and tattooing within the nostalgic atmosphere of the 1990s Keskturg.

With In Loving Hands, Keskpuur becomes a display window. Through the bars of the cage, three photographs hang against the backdrop of a lush pink curtain. The faded glory of Keskturg and the scent of meat create a contrasting environment for the display of something purely aesthetic.

Lehtsaar has long been drawn to photography, though it has mostly remained a flirtation. When photographs have appeared in their work, they have typically been transformed – into silkscreen or acetone prints.

With this project, the artist continues a personal exploration of commodity fetishism, which began during their master’s studies while engaging deeply with the work of Marcel Duchamp. The concept of commodity fetishism opens up a broader reflection on the commercial status of artworks and the notion of value and prosperity.

…

Maria Izabella Lehtsaar (b. 1998) is a Tallinn-based artist working primarily with underrepresented queer experiences and narratives, often playing with the boundaries between reality and fantasy. Their work combines pop-cultural aesthetics with sensitive monochrome graphics, alongside textiles, drawing, and poetry. Through the use of diverse media, familiar imagery is bent into layered meanings.

Lehtsaar holds a BA in Graphic Art (2020) and an MA in Contemporary Art (2024) from the Estonian Academy of Arts. In 2023, they were awarded the Eduard Wiiralt Scholarship. Their work has been exhibited in several duo and group exhibitions; most recently, their solo exhibition Hares Caress Your Hair was presented at Hobusepea Gallery in early 2026.

April 24 – August 15, 2026
Opening April 23 at 6pm

Announcing the opening of ‘Ersatz Strata’, a joint exhibition by Zody Burke (Tallinn, NYC, EKA MACA) and Klara Zetterholm (Stockholm) at Temnikova & Kasela gallery. 

The work is an exploration of a recently discovered imagined anthropological site of questionable provenance. Through reliefs, sculptures, printed work, kinetic elements, and industrial residue, the artists present an unreliable aesthetic archaeology in the language of natural history museums.

The exhibition includes a short story written by Jaakko Pallasvuo (a.k.a. Avocado Ibuprofen) with design by Taylor Tex Tehan (EKA GDMA).

The opening will include a live performance by musician and digital-age cosmogonist 011668 (Los Angeles), whose interdisciplinary work blends spirituality, consumption, and fossil fuel mythologies. The performance will occur just before twilight.

The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

EMTA, EKA and BFM invite you to the Science Café!

On Tuesday, 28 April at 18:00, an evening of discussion will take place at Apollo Plaza bookshop, bringing together artistic researchers from the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre (EMTA), the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA) and the Baltic Film, Media and Arts School at Tallinn University (TLÜ BFM) to share the thinking behind their practice and research, and to explore the nature, methods and outcomes of artistic research.

This edition of the Science Café focuses on the theme “Artistic Research: Reality and Fiction”. The creative process involves imagination: the ability to envision things and bring new objects and worlds into being. The research process, including artistic research, involves argumentation, verification and the scrutiny of facts. How, then, can artistic research reconcile factuality with imagination and fantasy, which are, in essence, forms of fabrication, or the making and presenting of things in ways they ordinarily are not? This Science Café explores the connections between reality and fiction in artistic research through the interests and works of researchers from different fields.

The discussion will be held in English.

Moderator: Liis Nimik (TLU BFM)

Participants: Sveta Grigorjeva (EMTA), Jaak Sikk (EMTA), Jaana Päeva (EKA), Carlos Eduardo Lesmes Lopez (TLU BFM),

To participate, if possible, please sign up here: https://docs.google.com/…/1FAIpQLSf07GGetTWMi2…/viewform

The event is free and open to all and takes place with the support of the Estonian Research Council’s science outreach programme.

New Date!

The 2025/2026 academic year open lecture series will be held in collaboration with the Institute of Art History and Visual Culture and the Faculty of Architecture. The theme of this academic year is “Architecture and the Ethics of Care” and the lectures will be curated by KVI Senior Researcher Dr. Ingrid Ruudi.

Architecture will be addressed from the perspective of the ethics of care: how does architecture take care of people’s physical, emotional and social needs, both today and in a historical perspective?

On April 3oth at 6 pm Dr Emma Cheatle will give a lecture “Lying in the Dark Room: Architectures of British Maternity”.

This research, and my book of the same name, studies the spatial, architectural experience of childbirth, through both a critical history of maternity (lying in) spaces and buildings and a creative exploration of those that we use today.

Where conventional architectural histories objectify buildings (in parallel with the objectification of the maternal body), the book presents a creative-critical autotheory of the architecture of lying-in. It uses feminist, subjective modes of thinking, which travel across disciplines, registers and arguments. The research assesses the transformation of maternity spaces—from the female bedchamber of the eighteenth-century marital home, to the lying-in hospitals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries purpose built by man-midwives, to the late-twentieth-century spaces of home and the modern hospital maternity wing—and the parallel shifts in maternal practices. The spaces are not treated as mute or neutral backdrops to maternal history, but as a series of vital, entangled atmospheres, materials, practices and objects that are produced by, and, in turn, produce particular social and political conditions, gendered structures and experiences.

Moving across spaces, systems, protagonists and their subjectivities, I show how historic hospital design and protocol altered ordinary birth at home and continues to shape maternal spatial experience today.

Dr Emma Cheatle is Senior Lecturer in Architecture at University of Sheffield. She trained as an architect in the UK and has a PhD in Architecture from the Bartlett, UCL which was awarded RIBA President’s Award for Outstanding PhD Thesis, 2014. Her research is interdisciplinary and examines the political, cultural and social implications of architecture, art and urban space, with a particular interest in addressing health, gender, race and disability inequalities. Her monograph Part-Architecture: The Maison de Verre, Duchamp, Domesticity and Desire in 1930s Paris (Routledge 2017) is a complex architectural humanities project, which engages critical and creative writing and drawing to analyse the building the Maison de Verre and the artwork “the Large Glass”, placing new primary and archival material in the context of social, sexual and medical histories of 1920s and 30s Paris. Her second book, Lying in the Dark Room: the Architectures of British Maternity (Routledge 2024), examines how the spatial histories of lying-in and maternal practices continue to shape the maternal body today. Emma is the UK Editor for the Bloomsbury Global Encyclopaedia of Women in Architecture 1960–2015 (Bloomsbury 2025), and part of several feminist projects including the Feminist Art and Architecture Collaborative (FAAC). Her collaboration with Hélène Frichot, University of Melbourne, led to a major edited collection of articles on the feminist theorist Jennifer Bloomer, for the Journal of Architecture (2024).

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.

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

Previous open architecture lectures can be viewed at www.avatudloengud.ee

You are welcome to join “Gardenly Spots” at EKKM Garden on Saturday, 2nd of May from 11.00-17.00. 

I invite you to prolong the engagement with your clothing and textiles, walk and forage, share stories and food. During the event we will repair and regenerate worn out surfaces and support stains with bundle dye. No previous experience in mending or working with textiles is needed. Please bring your clothes that need care and something to share for lunch.

This is a third project of Marta Konovalov´s PhD research at Estonian Academy of Arts, titled Repair and Regenerative Textile Design – Nourishing Engagements and Supporting the Development of the Aesthetics of Affect.

Hoping to see you soon,

Marta

Please register here: https://forms.gle/RX8jyuGeYfBALQpD6

Working language: English and Estonian

information: marta.konovalov@artun.ee

The EKA Institute of Art History and Visual Culture is part of the Visual Arts in Europe: An Open History (EVA) project that brings together more than 150 art and heritage historians representing the 46 member countries of the Council of Europe. The project is led by an Editorial Board, composed of six European specialists, and supported by the International Association of Research Institutes in the History of Art (RIHA). Its scientific and operational coordination is provided by the Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA) in Paris.

Launched in 2019, this scientific and editorial project results in the publication of a digital platform, documenting the history of the visual arts on the European continent, from prehistory to the present day. This platform will be structured around a collection of 475 objects and images, selected in consultation with all of its institutional partners. It is developed within the framework of an international dialogue, remaining attentive to the plurality and richness of scholarly traditions, accessible to all audiences, and providing an account of current research in the discipline of art history.

This seminar will examine the principles that inspired the launch of this project, the methodology used both for the selection of objects and the attribution of associated texts, as well as the challenges encountered during the development of the digital platform. The presentation of the project and platform prototype will be followed by an open discussion with colleagues from the EKA Institute of Art History and Visual Culture, host of this seminar and Estonian project partner. With INHA director Anne-Solène Rolland and project coordinator Margot Sanitas present, the seminar will be an opportunity for all the Estonian representatives to share their reflections on the selection of objects and how the project contributes to reshaping our common history of European visual culture.

From April 27 to May 15, EKA Library will be open from Monday to Friday from 10 to 21.

On From 18 to 21, the library is open only to students and staff of EKA.

Exhibition opening 01.05 at 6:00 PM

Artists participating in the exhibition: Anna Ovtšinnikova, Elo Vahtrik, Fausta Noreikaite, Giulio Cusinato

Graphic design: Elo Vahtrik

Drawings: Giulio Cusinato

The exhibition explores the relationship between urban space and the individual, focusing on how environments are experienced, navigated, and internally recorded. The city is approached not as a fixed structure, but as something continuously shaped through perception, object, movement, memory, and different forms of inhabitation.

Framed as an open field of inquiry, the show invites reflection on co-existence within the limits of shared spaces of (be)longing. “Site” appears in fragments: streets, surfaces, transitions, overlooked details. “Self” emerges as observer, documentalist, and inhabitant, negotiating, questioning, and/or passing by these environments.

Extending from questions of home, spaces that function as shelters holding temporary bodies in relative safety, to public urban landscapes where that same body becomes increasingly exposed, this shift from interior to exterior reveals a tension between protection and visibility, and highlights the instability of boundaries between private and public space.

Situated within Uus Rada Gallery in Tallinn, a student-run space positioned slightly outside the main institutional circuits of the city, the exhibition also reflects on its own site of presentation. The gallery becomes part of the same spatial inquiry it hosts, where access, visibility, and movement are quietly negotiated. Rather than functioning as a neutral container, the exhibition space extends the conditions it examines, situating the works within a threshold between institution, everyday passage, and shared urban terrain.

The exhibition is open: 

01.05.2026-16.05.2026 
Fri-Sun 16:00-20:00; 
During the week, upon appointment

We thank the Department of Fine Arts for their support.

Locations: EKA Gallery (Kotzebue 1) and the EKA Monumental Studio (Kotzebue 10)
28.04.–17.05.2026
Open Mon–Sat 2–6 pm Sun 12–4 pm (NB! Closed on May 1st!)

Fine Arts Assessment Marathon

The spring assessment marathon is here! For three weeks, visitors can once again visit the Assessment Marathon of the Faculty of Fine Arts and view the student projects finalized for the end of semester: almost every day, new artwork will be on display.

Visitors can see the final works of the students from the curricula of animation, photography, graphic design, installation and sculpture, contemporary art, painting and scenography.

A new exhibition is installed almost every evening of the marathon, and the previous evening’s display is replaced by a new one the following evening.

SCHEDULE

Tue, Apr 28. Drawing, Art BA II, supervisor Tõnis Saadoja (EKA Gallery)

Wed, Apr 29. Anatomical Drawing, Art BA I, supervisor Maiu Rõõmus (EKA Gallery)

Thu, Apr 30 – Sun, May 3. Photography, BA I, supervisor Tuukka Kaila (EKA Gallery)

Mon, May 4. Abstract Drawing, Art BA I and II, supervisor Tõnis Saadoja (EKA Gallery)

Tue, May 5. Studio Photography, Photography BA I, supervisor Madis Kurss (EKA Gallery)

Wed, May 6. Drawing, Art BA III, supervisor Britta Benno (EKA Gallery)

Thu, May 7 – Sun, May 10. Contemporary Art, MA I and II, supervisors: Merike Estna, Karel Koplimets, Camille Laurelli, Sten Saarits, Anna Skodenko, Kristi Kongi, Liina Siib, Viktor Gurov, Laura Põld, Tuukka Kaila, Reimo Võsa-Tangsoo (EKA

Gallery and Kotzebue 10 Monumental Studio)

Mon, May 11. Graphic Art, BA I, supervisors Kadi Kurema, Charlotte Biszewski, Mark Antonius Puhkan, Mirjam Varik (EKA Gallery)

Tue, May 12. Painting, BA I, supervisors Kristi Kongi, Jaan Toomik, Eero Alev, Holger Loodus (EKA Gallery)

Wed, May 13. Graphic Art, BA II, supervisors Viktor Gurov, Eve Kask, Maria Erikson, Liina Siib (EKA Gallery)

Thu, May 14. Installation and Sculpture, BA I, supervisor Laura Põld (EKA Gallery, Kotzebue 10)

Fri, May 15. Animation, MA I, supervisors Lilli-Krõõt Repnau, Bruno Quast (EKA Gallery)

Fri, May 15. Art Project, Scenography BA II, supervisor Liina Keevallik (Kotzebue 10)

Sat, May 16 – Sun, May 17. Drawing, Scenography BA II, Animation BA II, Photography BA I, supervisors Lilli-Krõõt Repnau, Eleri Porrison, Mark Antonius Puhkan (EKA Gallery, the exhibition is also part of the programme of the festival Kalamaja Days).

On 18 May, 2026 Taavet Jansen, doctoral student of Art and Design curriculum, will defend his doctoral thesis „ Disembodied Presence: A Conceptual and Practical Mapping of Streamed Theatre“ („Kehata kohalolu: voogteatri kontseptuaalne ja praktiline kaardistus“).
The public defense will take place at 10.00 at EKA (Põhja pst 7), room A101.
The defence will be held in Estonian.

Supervisor: Dr. Anu Allas (Estonian Academy of Arts)
External reviewers: Dr. Ott Karulin (University of Tartu)
Dr. Raivo Kelomees (Estonian Academy of Arts)
Opponent: Dr. Ott Karulin (University of Tartu)

Thesis is available in EKA digital repository.

Theatre has long operated as an artistic practice grounded in the encounter of bodies within the same space. Contemporary culture, however, no longer limits itself to physical encounters, but extends its trajectories everywhere through digital means and virtual spaces. A large part of our communication, work, and self-expression takes place digitally, mediated through screens. In such a situation, a question has emerged: what new forms, spaces, and experiences can theatre create for itself in the digital sphere?

At the centre of this doctoral dissertation is livestreamed theatre, a form of performance in which presence, space, and audience participation function on different premises than in conventional theatre. Livestreamed theatre is situated at the point of contact between theatre, film, online environments, and interactive media, and is grounded in a real-time event in which performers and spectators share a common time, but not a common space.

How can one create an experience that does not appear merely as a transmission, but as an artistic encounter? What possibilities are offered by technology, dramaturgy, and the active participation of the spectator? And what does all this mean for theatre more broadly, at a time when art must increasingly relate to the possibilities offered by digital environments?

To open up these questions, the author employs a practice-led research methodology, drawing on three artistic experiments — Wolves, Memento, and Inimeses hoitud — mapping the modes of operation of livestreamed theatre, the possibilities of audience participation, and testing its limits. Through these three projects, the work moves from video transmission toward interactive hybrid spaces, observing how the role of the performer, the position of the spectator, the experience of space, and the participants’ understanding of presence shift.

“Disembodied Presence: A Conceptual and Practical Mapping of Streamed Theatre” approaches livestreamed theatre not as a peripheral phenomenon, but as a possible new form of theatre. The dissertation offers both a conceptual and a practical mapping of a field in which theatre seeks new forms of life in digital spaces and experiments with how to remain alive in a world that is increasingly at once material and digital.

Maria Izabella Lehtsaar’s solo exhibition In Loving Hands opens on 25 April at 13:00. Drinks for the opening will be provided by Tuletorn Brewery, and the exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

The exhibition is open 26 April – 25 May
Keskpuur Gallery at Central Market, Keldrimäe 9 (2nd floor)

Keskpuur is pleased to present In Loving Hands, a solo exhibition by Maria Izabella Lehtsaar, bringing together experiments with media, commodity fetishism, and tattooing within the nostalgic atmosphere of the 1990s Keskturg.

With In Loving Hands, Keskpuur becomes a display window. Through the bars of the cage, three photographs hang against the backdrop of a lush pink curtain. The faded glory of Keskturg and the scent of meat create a contrasting environment for the display of something purely aesthetic.

Lehtsaar has long been drawn to photography, though it has mostly remained a flirtation. When photographs have appeared in their work, they have typically been transformed – into silkscreen or acetone prints.

With this project, the artist continues a personal exploration of commodity fetishism, which began during their master’s studies while engaging deeply with the work of Marcel Duchamp. The concept of commodity fetishism opens up a broader reflection on the commercial status of artworks and the notion of value and prosperity.

…

Maria Izabella Lehtsaar (b. 1998) is a Tallinn-based artist working primarily with underrepresented queer experiences and narratives, often playing with the boundaries between reality and fantasy. Their work combines pop-cultural aesthetics with sensitive monochrome graphics, alongside textiles, drawing, and poetry. Through the use of diverse media, familiar imagery is bent into layered meanings.

Lehtsaar holds a BA in Graphic Art (2020) and an MA in Contemporary Art (2024) from the Estonian Academy of Arts. In 2023, they were awarded the Eduard Wiiralt Scholarship. Their work has been exhibited in several duo and group exhibitions; most recently, their solo exhibition Hares Caress Your Hair was presented at Hobusepea Gallery in early 2026.

Opening of the exhibition “Reality of Dreams” at 18:00 at OKAPI Gallery in Tallinn

Participating artists: Ksenia Verbeštšuk, Nina Maria Allmoslechner

Curator: Ilja Jakovlev

Graphic design: Ksenia Kvitko

In the Victorian era, amateur photography became one of the hobbies of the “new and progressive” age that was socially acceptable for women. Initially, men believed that, much like drawing or embroidery, photography would serve as a pastime through which women could distract themselves from daily duties and engage in it playfully. However, quite quickly, women moved from depicting flowers, domestic animals, and garden views to more serious statements and visual experimentation. This has come down to us today through the work of outstanding Victorian women photographers such as Anna Atkins and Julia Margaret Cameron.

Somewhat later, women began to use photography for even bolder forms of expression, often in subtle and veiled ways, almost creating their own dreamlike worlds, sharply social self-portraits, or revealing the “double bottom” of existing reality, as seen in the works of Francesca Woodman and Diane Arbus.

Since its inception, analogue photography has undergone several periods of technological modification, and at a certain point it became an “alternative” way of capturing reality (or its altered states) against the backdrop of the growing popularity of digital photography. In the 21st century, film photography experienced a new rise, becoming extremely popular among followers of countercultural movements. Nevertheless, throughout all these periods, analogue photography has retained its power to enchant. It is practiced, studied, pursued professionally, and chosen as the primary medium in artistic work. The essence of analogue photography lies in its depth, the uniqueness of each frame, and the complex relationships between the environment, the author, and the final work.

Nina Maria Allmoslechner and Ksenia Verbeštšuk work with analogue photography, using it as a way of archiving different, sometimes liminal states of reality. For them, this manual photography is a process of creating a personal album of memory, within which their own dreamlands unfold.

Both artists, exhibiting together for the first time, enter into a dialogue about the interpretation of perceiving and understanding reality through the act of analogue photography—not so much from an aesthetic perspective as through the prism of mental states and emotions.

Nina Maria presents a series of tomograms of her brain alongside photographs of nature and self-portraits in the forest. She is interested in the relationship between human nature and the surrounding environment through the form of the brain, both visually and conceptually. Here, the brain is an ambivalent form: on the one hand an organ, on the other a portal between the “self” and the “surrounding.” The question is how one transforms into the other, where the boundary between these worlds lies, and whether it exists at all. After all, it is the brain that ultimately creates our personal reality, which is then recorded again on film. Nina Maria also reflects on the experience of derealization, raising the question of how a person perceives their place in “reality” and what happens when this perception is disrupted.

Ksenia interprets the creation of her reality through the very act of photography. The choice of composition, framing, subject matter, and the attempt to convey the play of light and shadow does not emerge from nowhere—it is a complex process that also takes place in our minds. By photographing people, animals, and landscapes, she archives her memory, creating a kind of album of places and events. In a sense, their analogue photographs are themselves tomographic self-portraits that exist inseparably from the surrounding environment they construct—sometimes almost surreal in nature.

An important theme for both artists is also their work with text. Ksenia keeps a personal diary and often accompanies her works with excerpts from it. This year, Nina Maria published the book When White Blankets. In the exhibition, they “meet” not only through photographs but also through text—large handwritten sentences on the wall.

Drinks at the opening are provided by PÕHJALA!

Exhibition dates:

30.04–06.06.2026

Wed–Fri 12:00–18:00

Sat 12:00–16:00

OKAPI Gallery

Niguliste tn 2, 10146, Tallinn

We thank the exhibition supporters:

OKAPI Gallery, PÕHJALA

The EKA Graduation Show Festival TASE ’26 opens on May 27, 2026 at 17:00.

At the graduation festival, the faculties of architecture, design, art culture, and fine arts will present this year’s final projects.

TASE ’26 will take place on the EKA campus in Kalamaja – in the EKA main building (Põhja pst 7 / Kotzebue 1), as well as in the buildings at Kotzebue 4 and 10, and on the Kotzebue 2 plot.

At the opening event, the Young Artist, Young Applied Artist, and Young Designer awards will be presented to bachelor’s and master’s level students.

The TASE ’26 exhibition will remain open from May 28 to June 19, daily from 13:00 to 19:00.

TASE chief organizer:
Kaisa Maasik-Koplimets, kaisa.maasik@artun.ee