Events

How do the advertisements we consume daily affect our behavior and establish certain gender roles? Can self-care become an empowering alternative to consumption? Or another clever advertising strategy that furthers oppression?   The solo exhibition The Best You Can Ever Be by artist Ede Raadik will open on Friday, February 14, at Tallinn Art Hall. In her work, Ede Raadik has employed socially conscious art installations as a tool to engage with the world that we inhabit. From staging a Menopause Club inspired by the species who experience this biological phenomenon and the cultural stigma associated with it to assuming the role of a scientist to analyze women’s medical data, to exploring a quiet workplace drama of female exploitation reflecting the challenges of living in Estonia, Raadik has found dark humor to be a generative and poetic rendering of social constructs.   

Seeing double: Estonian-born, Belgium-based artist Ingel Vaikla overlaps past and future, time and space in her audio-visual investigation of the subjective and the collective. In her first solo exhibition in Belgium, Ingel Vaikla conceptualises her work through the idea of the double exposure. We see archival footage of the city of Slavutych, the last city ever built by the Soviet Union, and we see it now as a young city in present-day Ukraine. In this way Vaikla invites us to let these overlapped realities develop simultaneously in our minds. If we have the courage to climb through the image, through time, space and experience, then we can start to understand how subjective and collective identities are formed, and how they in turn materialise on film, in politics and in architecture.

Kirke Kangro and Sheri Wills will open their exhibition The Solemn Admonition of Your Breathing in Hobusepea gallery at 6pm on Thursday, February 6th, 2020.   Exhibition will be open until February 23rd, 2020.   Today as then I turn to stone in your presence, sea, but no longer feel worthy of the solemn admonition of your breathing   Eugenio Montale   You look at the sea, and your substance begins to change. You look at it to look at something that’s not you. To implode and collapse. To be boundless, diverse and present. This view you could mount on a wall. To go back, to return in microscopic particles. Accelerating gaze, looking at the evading view.  

Sten Eltermaa's personal exhibition Transparency Register wil be open in Draakon gallery from Tuesday, February 4th, 2020.   Transparency Register is a project based on image and language, making the windows and facades of governmental authorities visible to the audience. The project involves various layers: reflective window transparencies, photographs on the wall and on the showcase table, and publication of the artist's research.   The title of the work, Transparency Register, also refers to the US-inspired database introduced in 2011 to shine public light on the communication between lobbyists and the representatives of EU institutions. The database’s main objective is to create trust in regard to institutions and the policies the institutions or their representatives are pursuing, but also oversight to make it impossible to do the bidding of murky and corrupt interests.  

On the 30th of January at 6pm.  photo artist Diana Tamane presents her book Flower Smugger at Tartu Art Museum Raekoja plats 18.   As part of the presentation, Tartu Art House’ curator Peeter Talvistu will conduct an artist talk with the author.   The book “Flower Smuggler”, published by “APE” (Ghent, Belgium), compiles several bodies of work with Tamane herself and her family as the main characters. Often, her relatives also become co-authors both actively participating in making of the work, as well as providing her with vernacular images, which initially were not meant to be presented in a gallery context. In the artist’s works, family albums, documents and private correspondence are transformed into catalysts, making it possible to reveal not only touching autobiographical stories but also apt portrayals of society and recent history, as well as the increasing role of photography in everyday life.  

Opening on 24th January at 4 pm.   The project “Artist and Researcher in Collections” is a further development of “Artists in Collections”, an exhibition series that took place in 2018 and was one of the highlights of the 100th anniversary celebrations of the Republic of Estonia. The University of Tartu Museum (UTM) wanted to invite an artist to research its collection with the aim of creating an exhibition in the university’s art museum, but with an important twist of adding to this dialogue also a scientist from the University of Tartu. The project managers of “Artists in Collections”, Maarin Ektermann and Mary-Ann Talvistu, selected the artist Taavi Suisalu who works with technology, sound and performance.  

On Friday, 24 January at 6 p.m. Grisli Soppe-Kahar will open her personal exhibition “Mute Scream” in the monumental gallery of the Tartu Art House.   Grisli Soppe-Kahar is currently one of the most powerful Expressionists in Estonian art. The brush strokes of her large format works are always forceful but their tonality has lately become increasingly muted. This, however, does not seem to point to negative undertones. The grotesque beings seem to be participating in some ritual or a game but the precise nature of this activity remains hermetically sealed. At the same time it cannot be completely ruled out that the absurdity on the canvases does not hide a silent cry for help.   The artist adds: Communication where you are in the background, that is overpowering, starts to oppress. Answering with the same is not constructive.

On Friday, 24 January at 5.30 p.m. Piibe Arrak will open her 80th anniversary exhibition in the large gallery of the Tartu Art House.   Piibe Arrak is an artist from Tartu with a lengthy career. According to herself, she values “old school” artistic principles and wants to preserve the painterly traditions although she continues to develop her own artistic world view. Her greatest role models have been Arnold Akberg in high school, Alfred Kongo in the Tartu Art School, Erich and Melanie Arrak in the Veeriku Studio, Ann Audova, Linda Kits and Silvia Jõgever in the Nude Studio of the Tartu Art House, and, of course, her late husband Eevart Arrak. She is a member of both the Tartu Artists’ Union and Estonian Painters’ Association.  

On Friday, 24 January at 5 p.m. the artist Laura Põld and the poet Katrin Väli will open their joint exhibition “Denial” in the large gallery of the Tartu Art House.   This exhibition is a continuation of two earlier joint projects of Põld and Väli: “Natural Shelter” (2019, Fiskars Village Art and Design Biennial, curator Jenni Nurmenniemi) and “Burrows. Flights” (2019, Hobusepea Gallery, Tallinn). The installation consists of Põld’s ceramic objects and sculptures, display cases containing supporting literature and Väli’s poems. Unlike the previous projects, the fragments from poems have a more organic appearance and therefore relate more closely with the rest of the exhibition.

On Friday, January 24 at 7 pm, the international group show “Equilibrium Delay” will open at Kogo Gallery. The exhibition consists of various artist films and is centred on the idea of the act of balancing regarding personal challenges, both physical and emotional. Participating artists: Garrett Brown (US), Simon Faithfull (DE/UK), Gerda Nurk (EE) and Alex Reynolds (ES/UK).