Maria Kapajeva  "I Am a Border"

Estonian artist Maria Kapajeva will open her largest solo exhibition to date at the Tallinn Art Hall’s Lasnamäe Pavilion on 28 May at 6 pm. Titled I Am a Border, the exhibition brings together 16 works created between 2014 and 2026, many of them produced specifically for this show. Admission is free.

The exhibition is the culmination of more than a decade of artistic research into the border as a geographical, bodily, and emotional phenomenon.

Its point of departure is the region beyond Narva, Narvataguse – the former homeland of the artist’s paternal family, now located within the Russian border zone and inaccessible to the family today. Through photographs, video works, installations, and textiles, Kapajeva approaches borderliness not as a fixed place, but as a continuous state of transition – never fully one thing, never fully becoming the other.

The works intertwine the Narva River, the post-operative body, family archives, a disappearing language, and disrupted connections to landscape and heritage. One of the exhibition’s central works, Four Generations Later, features the artist’s relatives reading dialect texts from the Narvataguse region recorded in 1947 – a language that has become partly incomprehensible even to younger Russian-speaking generations.

The installations incorporate materials such as maps from the family archive, diary entries by Kapajeva’s father, a family tree drawn by a geneticist, and a blanket that once belonged to the artist’s grandmother. Several works also explore the fluidity of the body and identity, connecting queer perspectives with ecology and border landscapes.

“What moves me in Maria Kapajeva’s work is her ability to speak about identity without simplifying it. Her works hold vulnerability, the weight of history, and a deeply personal clarity all at once,” said the exhibition’s curator Siim Preiman. “Every day I see how nationalism is often something that divides rather than unites us.”

The exhibition is accompanied by a diverse public programme:

• 28 May at 6.15 pm – artist Maria Kapajeva will present a performance at the exhibition opening
• 30 May at 2 pm – curator’s tour with Siim Preiman
• 17 June at 5 pm – artist’s tour with Maria Kapajeva
• In July, Maria Kapajeva and Anton Küünal will host a joint event exploring the intersections of plants, ecology, and queer perspectives (date to be confirmed)
• 9 August – a collective textile workshop titled Queering and Stitching together
• On the exhibition’s final day, 16 August, there will be an artist’s tour followed by a communal cooking event in the Korr-korr (Borborygmus) series, where the exhibition team and visitors will prepare and share food together

Maria Kapajeva

Maria Kapajeva is an artist whose work explores questions of identity and gender, with a particular focus on in-between and transitional states. Her works are included in several museum collections, including the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art and the Tartu Art Museum. She is currently pursuing doctoral studies at the Estonian Academy of Arts and is one of the recipients of the Estonian state artist’s salary.

Practical Information

Opening: 28 May 2026 at 6 pm
Location: Tallinn Art Hall’s Lasnamäe Pavilion
Open until: 16 August 2026
Opening hours: Wednesday–Sunday, 12 pm–6 pm
Admission: Free