Announcing the winners of the open call for “Chasing the Devil to the Moon”

Agate Tūna is a multidisciplinary artist based in Riga, Latvia. Her artistic background is in painting, but currently her main choice of medium is analogue and experimental photography (filmsoups, chemigrams, photogram) and sound art. By combining documentary and fictional elements in her photography, installation and oral history works, she investigates the role of images in shaping our beliefs. Tūna’s work explores the evolutionof technology and spirituality. In 2020 she received a BA in Arts from the Painting Department at the Art Academy of Latvia and in 2022 graduated from the two-year programme Developing Photo Language at ISSP (2020–2022, Latvia). Currently, she continues her studies in POST, an interdisciplinary MA programme at the Art Academy of Latvia (2021–2023).

Amélie Laurence Fortin lives and works between Quebec City (Canada) and Warsaw (Poland). Her work has been presented in various solo and group exhibitions, residencies, art fairs and festivals, and is part of private and public collections in Quebec and Europe. Over the past decade, exploration, territory and time are the three themes that have served as fundamental pillars in her artistic practice. With the ensembles The Shining Rock (2010–2019), Crash (2017–2019) and Ad Solis (2020–…), the artist addresses various perceptions of space. Fortin explores the limits of what we call reality and questions both our positioning in power relations and our obsession with collecting information.

Ann Mirjam Vaikla is based in Tallinn and works both in Estonia and internationally. In her artistic practice as an independent curator, artist and scenographer she is engaged with the intertwinement of ecological distress, non-human species/bodies and decolonisation. She is currently studying in the Decolonizing Architecture Advanced Studies (DAAS) postmaster programme at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. Previously she has studied Scenography (BA) at the Norwegian Theatre Academy as well as Culture and Arts (MA) at the Novia University in Finland. She is the co-curator of the residency cycle KORDON LAB on Food and Energy (2023–24). Her recent projects include curating the 8th Artishok Biennial Botanical Witnesses (2022) at the Tallinn Botanic Garden, Point of No Return. Attunement of Attention (2021) at Narva Art Residency (NART) and exhibiting her work Monument of (R)evolution (2021) at Tallinn City Gallery (Tallinn Art Hall).

Eglė Šimėnaitė is a Lithuanian artist, actor and performer from Vilnius, working in a wide field of artistic practice internationally. Her deeply pronounced interest in the sonic worlds of humans lead her thinking to translate from immaterial and “non-existing” into felt, understood and apparent. Investigating other abstract textures and materialities, together with her cross-disciplinary approach to creativity, has led her to build artistic performances molding sound, light, colour, temperature and other seemingly immaterial entities into experiences beyond plainly logical understanding. Her passion for sensed dramaturgy, thought, word, composition, atmosphere and aesthetics comes from musicality and whole-body listening practices, as well as from texts and paintings and other forms of art. She is a recent graduate with an MA in Directing from DAMU, Prague.

Artist collective Pau/a is formed by Paul Simon and Paula Veidenbauma. The duo established their collaboration in 2021 while studying at the Estonian Academy of Arts (master’s programme in Urban Studies). Having an academic background in-between (landscape) architecture and film and media theory, Pau/a engages with critical urbanism practices by creating interventions contextualised under their research fieldwork. Paul Simon is a landscape architect and urban activist, engaging with the topics of urban nature, postcapitalist city and migration. His works track down and celebrate the instances of absurdity that come with human cohabitation. Paula Veidenbauma is an urbanist, interested in the peculiarities of private and public segregation. She explores the spatial turn towards the neoliberal condition through her own body as a material for explorative praxis.

Jila Svicevic is a socio-ecologically engaged interdisciplinary artist. She has studied in Hungary, Slovenia and Estonia and received a master’s degree in intermedia arts. She has participated in exhibitions and residencies in Hungary, Estonia, Germany, Lithuania, Denmark, Switzerland, South Korea, The Netherlands and Russia. Her projects focus on sociocultural and environmental health. She is mainly active in the intersections of natural sciences and humanities for the benefit of our environments and lives. She considers different media formats as powerful tools for communication, education, adaptation, and finding creative solutions at the social level.

The exhibition promises to be a thought-provoking showcase of innovative and diverse artworks, exploring urgent ecological and social issues of our time. The exhibition will run from 9th of June to 27th of August 2023 at Tallinn Art Hall City Gallery.