Ulvi Haagensen “Home Exhibition”

Ulvi Haagensen
Kodunäitus / Home Exhibition
Lembitu 6-6, Tallinn
8.–10.01.2022
Please register HERE

There are many ways to make an exhibition at home. You could paint the walls white, clear away all traces of everyday life and set up the artwork as you might in a white cube gallery. Or you could set up your work in and around existing everyday objects. Or you could not really do anything and simply invite people to your place and call it an exhibition. Art can after all, be whatever we decide it will be.

Ulvi Haagensen and her three imaginary friends, Thea Koristaja, Olive Puuvill and Artist-Researcher are using Ulvi’s home as the venue for their exhibition. This is an environment that combines home, studio and now also exhibition space. Their aim is to explore the lines between art and everyday life and as they do, they puzzle over distinctions of whether something is art or non-art, practical or impractical, useful or useless, mundane or special. They are curious to know how people will know what they are looking at. Will they know whether something is art or non-art; are they supposed to be looking at this thing or not? But maybe these questions don’t really matter, because maybe what we are really interested in is seeing how other people live.

Ulvi Haagensen was born in Sydney, Australia, but has been living, working and teaching in Tallinn for many years. She studied at City Art Institute in Sydney (BA) and College of Fine Art, University of New South Wales (MFA) and is currently doing her PhD at the Estonian Academy of Arts researching the connections and overlap between art and everyday life, as seen through the eyes of an artist, for whom art, work and everyday life are closely interwoven. In her research she is assisted by three imaginary friends – an artist cleaner, an artist bricoleuse and an artist researcher. She has had solo exhibitions in Estonia, Australia, Sweden and Lithuania.