Estonian art news: Summer 2019 / Discover art outside of the centres

CCA, Estonia publishes a newsletter on contemporary art news in Estonia in every two months. Summer 2019 newsletter in full length can be found here.

TOP PICKS

“Art Museum of Estonia 100. Open Collections: The Artist Takes the Floor”

05.07 – 10.11
@Kumu Art Museum

To celebrate the centenary of the Art Museum of Estonia, an examination of the museum’s collection will be organised in Kumu’s Great Hall, the geographic and temporal dimensions of which extend from the international to the local, from the Middle Ages to the present day. All of the popular approaches to art history owe their emergence to the museum. But what happens when artists intervene and provide their own versions of an era, a work or a movement, when an artist functions as a curator? The curator of the project is Eha Komissarov.

“The Art of Being Good”
22.06 – 01.09
@Tallinn Art Hall

Tallinn Art Hall presents an international group show “The Art of Being Good“ that brings into focus the complex ethical issues of making art during a time of climate crisis. The participating artist’s practices provide many different examples of how to cope with a world on the brink of a crisis. Therefore, the international group show is not comprised of only one specific art of wellbeing, but includes introverted, almost (self-)therapeutic practices, instructions for sustainable creation, activist documentary and investigative works, dissatisfaction with the existing ways of creating and exhibiting art, cunning interventions into commercialised space, and more. The show is curated by Siim Preiman.

“Xenos”

13.07 – 25.08
@EKKM

The problem of feeling alienated and strange is the universal problem of globalised/ing modernity, where everybody is strange to everybody else. Curator Anders Härm has brought together a group of international artists to create an exhibition that doesn’t have activist pretensions in general, although it might include in some level also elements of direct action. It is more a contemplation, an essay in the form of an exhibition that tries to shed light upon the question of otherness and of strangeness from different angles provided by the wide range of artists participating at the show.

“Published by Lugemik. Printed matter from 2010 – 2019”

18.05 – 01.09
@Estonian Museum of Applied Arts and Design

The exhibition “Published by Lugemik. Printed matter from 2010–2019” presents for the first time all the titles published by Lugemik in the last decade. As an independent art publisher, Lugemik has mapped a large part of the Estonian contemporary art and design landscape through numerous collaborations with artists, designers, theorists and cultural institutions, resulting in a variety of printed matter. The exhibition strives to talk about the aspect of translation in Lugemik’s practice, and will also reflect on topics related to book-making, such as graphic design, contemporary methods for art reproduction, and various forms of collaboration.

“Geometry and Metaphysics. Mare Vint and Arne Maasik”
07.06 – 25.08
@Museum of Estonian Architecture

Printmaker Mare Vint and architect-photographer Arne Maasik, younger by one generation, are both well-known Estonian artists. However, the exhibition in the Museum of Estonian Architecture is for the first time they are presenting their works together, a specific dialogue is created where Maasik’s works are in direct response to those of Vint. The photo series Architectonics specially taken for the exhibition are like Maasik’s tribute to Vint’s architecturally organised pictorial worlds, but also reflect his understanding of the ideal space and ideal architecture as an architect.

“SAAL Biennial”

14.08 – 31.08
@Kanuti Gildi SAAL

SAAL Biennaal is a new festival in name, but is rooted in the fertile ground of the oldest international contemporary dance and performing arts festival in Tallinn – August DanceFestival(since 1996). As a result of the overall melting of the borders between different art forms it is only natural that in addition to performances in a theatre setting, the programme of SAAL Biennaal also includes staged exhibitions, film installations, city walks and other in-between genre events all over town.

See the full list of recommended art events in the newsletter here.