Spring Exhibition 2021: Outside / In
Curator: Corina L. Apostol
Evelyn Grzinich and John Grzinich, Aksel Haagensen, Siiri Jüris, Jaanika Peerna, Lilli-Krõõt Repnau, Ann Mirjam Vaikla and Szymon Kula, Aleksandr Osvald August von Turro-Lebardov, Liis-Marleen Verilaskja.
What are the common threads between the experience of Soviet-era refugees from Estonia and a generation born after independence? How fragile is the environment that we take for granted? What do playfully abstract feminist utopias share in common with nonrepresentational visions of unidealised bodies? Can we learn more about our dreams by collecting them, similarly to an archive that holds together diverse creative experiences?
Australian-born, Tallinn-based artist Aksel Haagensen has created an installation that speaks to his mixed heritage and reconnects to his place of birth, while processing the historical events that led to his family’s exile. Jaanika Peerna’s performance across the ocean in Brooklyn asks us to consider the slowly vanishing glaciers melting into the air before the eyes of this generation.
Ann Mirjam Vaikla has created a powerful monument, together with the Polish artist Szymon Kula, dealing with the remnants and utopias of a not-too-distant past fading away under the varnish of capitalism. Lilli-Krõõt Repnau focuses on feminist utopias and also dystopias inspired by a series of articles on the topic of women’s emancipation.
Who are the women in the historical photos looking back at us in Aleksandr Osvald August von Turro-Lebardov series of postcards entitled 1st? The Box, an installation conceived by Evelyn and John Grzinich, founders of MoKS (Mooste), pieces together the activities of a contemporary arts organisation that, by all accounts, should have never happened.
Liis Marleen Verilaskja proposes that we join her on a very personal journey through her dreams, creating an installation that lets the viewer experience their elusive nature. Physical contact has been a key topic of the pandemic year, and Siiri Jüris looks at precisely that in her painting: the touching of bodies, the material textures that a body consists of echoed through waves of colour and paint.
Staging a spirited rendezvous between artworks produced in conversation with or as a result of encounters between disparate realities and realms, between theory and practice, memory and forgetting, this exhibition invites viewers to consider bodies, borders, and belongings through the artists’ fresh, perceptive lenses.
The long-awaited Spring Exhibition 2021 of the Estonian Artists’ Association is returning to its roots: approached from different angles, artworks completed in 2020/2021 will be exhibited at three exhibition venues of Tallinn Art Hall. The main exhibition of works selected by the jury will be displayed at Tallinn Art Hall, while two curated satellite exhibitions will be on view nearby at Tallinn City Gallery and the Art Hall Gallery.