Events

Kordon Artist Film Festival (KOFF) will take place on 4.– 5.08.2022 in Kordon Artist Residency in Kärdla, Hiiumaa. KOFF's focus is on experimental audiovisual works and artists moving image practice. The 2022 festival features poetic documentaries by Diana Tamane (EE/LV) and Julie Pfleiderer (DE/BE) which deal with an identity of a place, focusing mainly on the relationship between a person and an environment. Both films are characterized by the filmmakers' personal (family) ties with their subjects. The films will be followed by a discussion with the filmmakers. In parallel to the film programme the video work ‘Double Exposure’ by Ingel Vaikla (EE/BE) filmed in Slavutych, Ukraine in 2019 can be viewed in the Kordon Container Gallery. Donations for the support of war refugees in Ukraine will be collected during the festival.

OPENING 04.08 at 19:00! Estonian artist, DJ and traveler Tarrvi Laamann, who resides in Jamaica, will open a large comprehensive solo exhibition at Põhjala Galleries on Thursday, August 4. The exhibition will feature a collection of works that have received their initial impulse from the author's travels in very different places around the world. The common feature running through all the creations is that the initial impulse of the paintings is an impression in the printing technique. The common denominator of the exhibition is the word pair ME DEYA - I am here in the Jamaican dialect, which invites the viewer to be in the moment.

“A statue can be the base of an entire structure as well as a highlighted cult object at once. In the next moment, it is just a pillar or someone's future pension,” says Kaupo Kikkas, the author of the exhibition, as an introduction.  On 03.08., at 19:00, the photography artist Kaupo Kikkas will open his photographic exhibition Statue in the SOLARIS Gallery. In cooperation with make-up artist Õnne Rudi, top Estonian athletes were turned into human sculptures, bringing to life the beauty ideals of ancient Greece. This is how living statues emerged, aesthetically beautiful as ancient columns, but lacking the coldness of stone and with real people behind them.

You are invited to the opening of a group exhibition titled Expectations of the End on the 5th of August at 18:00 that takes place at Viljandi Old Water Tower. The exhibition will remain open until 31st of August. Four artists look into the future at a safe haven called Viljandi Old Water Tower from 5th of August 2022: Egle Ehtjen, Kelli Gedvil, Hanna-Liisa Lavonen and Helle Ly Tomberg with their exhibition Expectations of the End.  They explore how to relate to a world that is ending. Denial, fear, grief or reconciliation is on the table. You can also feel joy and wonder. One can be viewed from humanly close or cosmically far. 

Andres Koort will open his personal exhibition Chaos and Order in Hobusepea gallery at 18:00 on Wednesday, July 27th, 2022. Exhibition will be open until August 22nd, 2022.  The title Chaos and Order refers to the two opposite forces and the motion between these two states. Etymologically, the word “chaos” is related to Greek verb “χαίνω” that denoted the yawning emptiness, void, gap. This is the initial existence of non-existence of things; a state consisting of a potential, a yearning for getting structured. This is the commencement phase of things charged with pure energy, the birth moment of all things. Also, exact sciences study the essence of “chaos”. According to the theory of chaos, there are a systematic ground structure, constant feedback, repetitions, self-resemblance, fractals and self-organization behind the seemingly random behaviour of chaotic complex system.

General common sense would say that there is no Planet B, and we should focus and target all resources on fixing planet Earth which humanity has managed to bring to a fatal stage. We are living in the geological time known as the Anthropocene – the age when human activity began to influence the planet’s climate and ecosystems significantly.     Nevertheless, the super-rich, like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, choose to invest (but also obtain a big junk of public funding) in space research and speculate about the possibility of leaving for Planet B. Surprisingly, such naive escapism gains attention instead of undoing the ecological damage on Earth and begins to be considered as an alternative option to the heavily contaminated and problematic Planet A. The billionaires reassure the public of their altruistic intentions for a better future while realizing their power, capital, and technophilia dreams.   Why do people like Elon Musk want to save us? And most importantly, why do they want us to believe that we need to be saved?  

On Friday, July 29 at 6:00 p.m., the exhibition “7 artists. Body“ will open in the large gallery of Tartu Art House. The curators of the exhibition are Mall Nukke and Tiiu Rebane. The conceptual starting point of the exhibition is the “body“. What is the body, right here and now? Is it topical, sexual, social, cultural, environmentally sensitive, political, spiritual, or something else? How “is” something a body and another thing “is not”? The exhibition dedicated to the figurative paintings of seven artists is a continuation of the series of exhibitions held at the initiative of the painter Mall Nukke and under the auspices of the Estonian Painters Association. The series started in the spring of 2021 at the Rantakasarmi Gallery of the Helsinki Artists’ Association in Suomenlinna, Finland.

On Friday, 29 July at 6 p.m. Karin Strohm will open her solo exhibition “Too late to be modest” in the small gallery of Tartu Art House. Karin Strohm’s exhibition consists of a series of paintings that represent visual mind games. Thought games, inspired by the relationship between nature and the Anthropocene. This is a glimpse into the circle of life. The artist adds: “Landscapes grown over by carnivorous plants inhabited by a mass of breeding rabbits. Rabbits as the symbols of the civilised world in a carnivorous jungle. Who’s eating who here? Regardless of the mobility of the breeders, the plants will get to us when we are under the soil sooner or later. In a competition which is exceedingly escalating and in an atmosphere full of pressure, the rabbits will continue breeding. This, in turn, produces humus and meat for the carnivores…”

On Wednesday, August 3 at 4 p.m. the exhibition “Reflecting the Self” will open in the Valga Museum. The exhibition is curated by Peeter Talvistu. A special bus from Tartu is available for the opening! For the fourth time, Tartu Artists’ Union will organise an exhibition of contemporary art in the gallery of the Valga Museum. This time, however, the central figure is one of the first renowned woman artists in Estonia: Karin Luts. The self-portraits that she made at different points in her life will be accompanied by six contemporary authors: Cloe Jancis, Loora Kaubi, Eva Labotkin, Margit Lõhmus, Anna-Stina Treumund and Mari Volens. Even though their depictions of themselves are very different visually and conceptually, the persona of Luts and her writings have played a significant role in the development of many of today’s woman authors in Estonia.

Sirje Petersen will open her personal exhibition Flow of Light in Draakon gallery at 18:00 on Monday, July 25, 2022. Exhibition will be open until August 19, 2022.  Light shows us colours.  What's out comes in and what's in gets out. Openness and closeness. Light helps us to see details and light makes darkness go away. Everyone has a place and a space in this world, sometimes it is warm and cosy, sometimes cold and bleak. Sometimes it is noisy, sometimes it is too silent. Always changing – in light and in shadow. No-one can grow in darkness. It becomes possible in light.  Darkness may seem endless but a ray of light can always lit it up and make everything alive.