Kristina Õllek "Waters of Hypoxic and Once Toxic, Do You See?"

Kristina Õllek
Waters of Hypoxic and Once Toxic, Do You See?
23.01– 01.03.2026
Opening 23.01 at 4pm

Kristina Õllek’s solo exhibition at Kuressaare Raegalerii continues the artist’s long-term research into the ecological, geological, and chemical processes of the Baltic Sea. Awarded the Eerik Haamer Art Prize in 2024, Õllek’s practice moves simultaneously across multiple temporal scales—from the eutrophicated and hypoxic waters of the present to hundreds of millions of years in the past, when the territory of present-day Estonia lay on the equator and was covered by a shallow tropical sea.

Õllek approaches the Baltic Sea as a slow and vulnerable system, shaped by anthropogenic pollution, climate change, and limited water exchange. Excess nutrients and rising water temperatures fuel extensive cyanobacterial blooms, which lead to oxygen-depleted dead zones. These processes are not temporary anomalies but accumulate as layers, settling both on the seabed and into our collective future.

In her installations and photographic works, Õllek employs materials with their own chemical and biological agency, including limestone, water from the Baltic Sea, sea salt, cyanobacteria, clay, and fluorescent pigments. In Õllek’s practice, the photographic surface becomes a site where materials continue to change, grow, and decay.

Kristina Õllek (b. 1989, Tallinn, Estonia) is a visual artist based in Tallinn, Estonia. She works in the fields of photography, video and installation, often making use of microbial and chemical processes, with a focus on investigating aquatic ecosystems, geological matter and human-altered environments. In her practice, she uses a research-based approach, but within she also incorporates her own fictitious and speculative perspectives. With her work, she raises questions around the relationship between natural and synthetic, original and copy, and understandings of materiality by obtaining a new and reconsidered meaning. She is interested in stretching out the boundaries of what we can see and use as an image and space, especially in the age of rapidly developing and highly manipulative technology.

Kristina Õllek holds a Bachelor’s degree (2013) and a Master’s degree (2016) from the Photography Department of the Estonian Academy of Arts. She furthered her studies at Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissensee in 2012 and at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam in 2016. Õllek was awarded the Estonian Academy of Arts Young Artist Prize in both 2013 and 2016. From 2013 to 2018, she was a co-founder and active member of the artist-run space Rundum. In 2023, she received a three-year artist grant from the Estonian Artists’ Association and the Estonian Ministry of Culture.

Kristina Õllek’s works have been shown in various international group and solo exhibitions including at Kai Art Center (Tallinn), KUMU Art Museum (Tallinn), Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (Gateshead), Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (Oslo), State of Concept (Ateena), La Traverse (Marseille), Zeppelin Museum (Friedrichshafen), A Tale of A Tub (Rotterdam), Le Lieu Unique (Nantes), Screen City Biennial, (Stavanger), Fotomuseum Winterthur.

The exhibition is supported by the Estonian Cultural Endowment.