PRESS RELEASE - Kristina Norman: We Are Not Alone in the Universe in the Darkroom 26 Nov 2010 – 16 Jan 2011. Turun Taidemuseo, press release 19.11.2010 (http://www.turuntaidemuseo.fi/index.php?cat=10&aid=11&lang=en)

Media preview on Thursday, 25 November 2010, at 11am in Turku Art Museum, Aurakatu 26, Turku
The artist will be present on the media previw
Welcome!

The year dedicated to Baltic and Russian video and media art in the Darkroom gallery at the Turku Art Museum is brought to a close by the Estonian artist Kristina Norman (b. 1979). In her documentary piece Me ei ole universumis üksi / We Are Not Alone in the Universe (2010, DVD, 11:33 min), a group of people have gathered in a field at the unveiling of a new monument. The media are present to capture the historic moment. Finally, Mati Jakson unveils the memorial at the site where his mother once witnessed a UFO land.

In her art, Kristina Norman explores our relationship to monuments. The collection exhibition at Kiasma currently features Norman’s After War (2009). The work addresses the chain of events that began when the Estonian Government moved the so-called Bronze Soldier, a monument to Russian soldiers, from a central location in downtown Tallinn to a military cemetery. The ensuing violent riots showed how intensely people felt about the monument and what it symbolised. The artist herself was arrested by the police when she brought her own gilded version of the statue to the original site of the Bronze Soldier. Norman is currently working on a new piece that takes as its theme the War of Independence Victory Column, unveiled a year ago in the centre of Tallinn. Completed hastily, the monument has received mixed reviews.

The monument unveiled by Mati Jakson does not involve a memorial to some historical event commissioned by the powers that be, but rather a lived moment in the yard of a house in north-east Estonia. On 27 November 1996, Mati Jakson’s mother saw from the kitchen window a UFO that landed about 50 metres from the house. The unforgettable optical phenomenon was also seen by the neighbours. Some ten years later, Jakson decided to erect a monument to commemorate the event. The gilded letters carved in limestone are a reminder of this important event which was experienced by the neighbours – no other evidence of it exists. At the unveiling ceremony, Mati Jakson shoots a small rocket into the sky, a symbolic greeting intended to convey the message that we are not alone in the universe.

ARTIST TALK
Thursday, 25 November 2010, starting at 1pm, Kristina Norman will give a talk in English about her artistic practice in the Kuvateatteri of the Turku Arts Academy (Linnankatu 54–60).