ASC_kaascopy

The Eyes of My Other


<p><strong>Kaarin Kivirähk</strong> is the editor-in-chief of A Shade Colder.</p>


Kaarin Kivirähk


<p><strong>Keiu Krikmann</strong> is the managing editor of A Shade Colder.</p>


Keiu Krikmann


<p>A Shade Colder is a new magazine for conversations about and around art in Estonia and beyond. The publication launches at a time when the region has found itself at the centre of international discussions. We hope that through the lens of contemporary art and visual culture the magazine will become an inspiration and a useful source for engaging with this part of the world.</p>



<p>The first issue, <em>The Eyes of My Other </em>aims to open a multicentric view on art (history). We are seeking to expand and provide a more nuanced perspective on Estonian art, while framing it within an international context. The issue explores ways of (re)framing Estonian visual culture, born between the East and the West, both in the past and the present, looking at both individual artistic practices as well as institutional efforts.</p>



<p>In doing so, the artists and writers featured in this issue conjure images of (frightening) beauty, discuss decolonisation outside the national project, carefully consider local complexities, and being aware of the differences and agency of the gaze from inside and out, they look for shared narratives between art in Estonia and elsewhere.</p>



<p>Highlighting a multiplicity of perspectives is crucial, so that complex social, political and cultural processes would not be reduced to simplistic ideas and discussed based on out-dated concepts and models. This is especially urgent in the light of Russia’s vicious war against Ukraine, the consequences of which will be with us for years to come. A Shade Colder stands in solidarity with the Ukrainian people and will be donating 50% of the proceeds of the sales of its first issue to the Ukrainian Cultural Centre in Estonia, which has been providing support in Ukraine since 2014, as well as the Ukrainian Emergency Art Fund, directly targeting the needs of the art community in Ukraine.&nbsp;</p>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-image-block"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/editorial_illustratsioon-1.jpg" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/editorial_illustratsioon-1-150x150.jpg 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/editorial_illustratsioon-1-300x195.jpg 300w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/editorial_illustratsioon-1-1024x665.jpg 1024w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/editorial_illustratsioon-1-1214x788.jpg 1214w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/editorial_illustratsioon-1-1560x1013.jpg 1560w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/editorial_illustratsioon-1.jpg 1617w" data-sizes="auto" width="1617" height="1050" alt="" class="lazyload"/><figcaption>Illustration: Martina Gofman and Johanna Ruukholm, <em>The Eyes of My Other</em>, 2021.</figcaption><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>


editorial_illustratsioon

Editorial. The Eyes of My Other


<p><strong>Shola von Reinhold</strong> is a Scottish writer. Their debut novel, LOTE (2020), was published by Jacaranda Books and won the Republic of Consciousness Prize and the James Tait Memorial Prize.</p>


Shola von Reinhold


<p>I was invited to write on “the different images of beauty that emerge when discovering hidden histories and how these images bleed into and change our perspective on the present”. As part of this project, I was brought on a research trip to Tallinn, where I met artworks, artists, designers and researchers. The following notes, in the most spurious, tangential, threadbare, even subconscious way, contain the afterglow of some of these encounters and conversations and decorative turns.</p>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-image-block"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/shola-ornament-veebi1-scaled.jpg" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/shola-ornament-veebi1-150x150.jpg 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/shola-ornament-veebi1-300x155.jpg 300w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/shola-ornament-veebi1-1024x528.jpg 1024w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/shola-ornament-veebi1-1400x721.jpg 1400w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/shola-ornament-veebi1-1800x927.jpg 1800w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/shola-ornament-veebi1-2000x1030.jpg 2000w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/shola-ornament-veebi1-2400x1236.jpg 2400w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/shola-ornament-veebi1-3000x1545.jpg 3000w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/shola-ornament-veebi1-scaled.jpg 2560w" data-sizes="auto" width="2560" height="1319" alt="" class="lazyload"/><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>



<p>I’ve written before – or tried to – about the sheer sensational force (and romance) of ‘recovery’, be it of artworks, personae, or even ways of feeling, of relating, of experientiality (including of art). I sometimes, against my better judgement, find myself thinking about a moment of the recovery process in terms of an exhumation, one that releases a kind of psychic charge – of course, exhumation is often bounded by a context so deeply, horrifically colonial that it is not a helpful word for the kind of recovery I’m thinking of – and then of course the term ‘recovery’ has serious limits – edges which begin to fray very quickly under scrutiny. The kind of recovery I’m thinking of is, more often than not, in direct contravention of that kind of history-making (disinterment, exhumation of tombs, looting, atrocity). Perhaps the easiest and most well-known recent example of the kind of recovery I mean would be Saidya Hartman’s <em>Wayward Lives</em>, which reupholsters the “extravagance, ornament and shine” of Black social existence, of “the utopian longings and the promise of a future world that resided in waywardness and the refusal to be governed.”</p>



<p class="has-text-align-left">Fragment of a recovery play<br>Dramatis Personae<br>Heraldrine, a member of the Undinous Court, having been ‘a visitor’ there since before theye can remember<br>Undinous Ordinators<br>Assistant Ordinator</p>



<p class="has-text-align-left">Act I Scene I: <em>A soiree is being given by the Ordinators of the Undinous Court – one of several courts in the Anti-Palace. The party is being given in honour of the discovery of an antique.</em></p>



<p class="has-text-align-left"><em>In the centre of the Anti-Palace’s ante-saloon, on display, is a huge faintly green glass vessel – almost heart-shaped, with multitudinous tubes spiralling hither and thither – many are cracked, and all are broken high up with the effect of trailing off into the air or another dimension. Whatever they might have been connected to is now impossible to envisage. In the heart of the almost-heart is a threaded mass of threads – networks spun from cords and fibres of silver and aquamarine, rose and gold, which trail off into the various tubes, in places looking like compact fairy moss clogging the heart of a dryad or zephyr but in a very healthy sort of manner.</em></p>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-details-block details"><p>The Assistant Ordinator:<br>How delicious, it really is unspeakable.</p><p>The Ordinator I:<br>We exhumated the whole thing from the bowels of the earth ourselves.</p><p>The Assistant Ordinator:<br>Oh, you mean that hole in the ground in your back garden?</p><p>The Ordinator II:<br>Yes!</p><p>The Assistant Ordinator:<br>Where, pray tell, is Heraldrine, how disappointing that theye are going to miss the-</p></div>



<p class="has-text-align-left">Enter Heraldrine</p>



<p class="has-text-align-left">Heraldrine (looking at the glass vessel):<br>…<br><br>…</p>



<p class="has-text-align-left">………….</p>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-details-block details"><p>Ordinator II:<br>Yes, we knew you’d like it.</p><p>Assistant Ordinator:<br>I think theye are going to faint if you ask me.</p></div>



<p>Often descriptions of uncovering, unearthing and object revelation will centre around the moment of ‘discovery’ or shortly after – a painting being dusted and 300 years of stored up Time and History and Unseen-ness and so on hitting the finder/viewer, or a photograph or a diary issuing a singular chronological heave, a flash of temporal dislocation exposing the now of then (or vice versa), but the actual experience is considerably more prolonged. Sure, there can be that big seismic thwack. But it really comes in waves or trickles slowly. The exertion of then on <em>now</em>. Of now on then on now.</p>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-image-block"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/shola-elemendid2.png" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/shola-elemendid2-150x150.png 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/shola-elemendid2-300x155.png 300w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/shola-elemendid2-1024x531.png 1024w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/shola-elemendid2.png 1125w" data-sizes="auto" width="1125" height="583" alt="" class="lazyload"/><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>



<p>That said, exhumation still comes to my mind because it recalls something of that psychic release – the sensational but also ‘something else-ness’ that happens on say really looking at a photograph that hasn’t been seen for decades – the sense of dredging up a magic that exerts itself on the present, of an object being seen.</p>



<p>As much as these terms come easily because they, at least descriptively, come close to a moment in the process of recovery and verbally sate the way it feels, they could very easily be misread, could figure what I’m describing as a kind of insipid spume – a little rhetorical fancy that in the end means nothing because, say finding a piece of art from several decades ago doesn’t <em>actually</em> do anything to the world… “What the hell is a ‘psychic charge?’” etc. But aside from being constitutionally dull – the flattening of a romantic turn – this reading would be (grievously) incorrect.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Second fragment—</h3>



<p class="has-text-align-left"><em>presumed to be from Act I, Scene II. In which Heraldrine inquires into the nature of the Undines and remembers why theye came to the Undinous court in the days before time choked up entirely</em></p>



<p class="has-text-align-left">Heraldrine, waking up in bed after theire fainting episode, recalls theire Compartment Life – in other words that in-between life, always, running like a green underground stream, was a life no less or more just simply in-between – a realisation which came to them upon looking at the mass of threads on the heart-like glass chamber … theire Compartment Life is Mottine, and upon knowing that she is Mottine, she dons Heraldrine’s favourite jewels, doublet, and so on, and takes herself to the Minor Undine Library – there she browses for several hours before finding what she knew would be there:<br><em>The Memoirs of Mottine Mottine Firrre-Mottine</em></p>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-details-block details"><p><strong>Thursday, March 3rd</strong><br>I am here. I unpacked my paints today and walked around. It is so cold in the studios. The fountain struck me, and I will have to tell you about it another time. I have to go to meet the other painters and hope they are as I have dreamt they will be.</p></div>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-details-block details"><p><strong>Sunday, April 4th</strong><br>It is a month on (sorry) and I literally weep at the naivety of my last entry. I have made no friends here. Everyone avoids me. Not just because they know what I am but because … I don’t know it is hard to express. It is more than that.</p></div>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-details-block details"><p><strong>Monday, April 5th</strong><br>I have decided to paint the fountain.</p></div>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-details-block details"><p><strong>Tuesday, April 6th</strong><br>A new painter has arrived and has been installed in the studio next to mine. He peeped his head in yesterday and I wanted to die because I thought he seemed so charming, and I knew we would never be friends.</p></div>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-details-block details"><p><strong>Wednesday, May 6th</strong><br>I have made friends with the boy in the next studio. Even in May the studios are so cold, and we spent the day hunting for portable heaters and found some in a basement which no one seems to know exists – perhaps 300 centuries of Things lie there – I mean some real discarded masterpieces and everything but most importantly heaters.</p><p>It is, by the way, a month again since my last entry. So my neighbour: One day – can’t remember when now – shortly after he popped his head in and I wanted to die – I saw him standing in front of the great fountain which is in itself a curiosity. For example, the fountain is of a Rebis (or similar), some ancient god of both sexes or neither, and it is completed in a dark blue stone and plashes away all day and people come and sit on it or throw things in it, occasionally, or sometimes push each other into it, or jump on the ice when it’s frozen reflecting the silver of everything – and yet no one ever comments upon it. It is so clearly a vestige of the Before Times or Between Times. Well, this was the first time I ever saw anyone really taking it in. So I resolved that, when he next popped his head in, if he ever did again, I would ask him about it and show him my painting.</p><p>Well, I waited and waited one day, and nothing, and nothing the next, and looked for him every time I was painting by the fountain. When he finally popped his head in a week on, I basically screamed so loudly he jumped back and his glasses literally fell off his face: “The fountain!”</p><p>And he picked up his glasses and I think, piecing things together, came to look at the painting.</p><p>He told me the story of the undines – who are visible everywhere in this city but only vestiges of vestiges.</p></div>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-details-block details"><p><strong>Thursday, May 41st</strong><br>He spoke to me about something called a recovery play. These were in fact a popular form around 300 years ago – about the point at which things kept getting dredged up and people became adept and Finding Things … the force he said of recovery was so intense people started making plays about them, to process; the force he said was all a matter of material history. That also the Context of these Things became available again and thus so did the form, the perfume of the era or something like this surfaced, so the plays were ways to rediscover the form but let the form operate on the world once more through these objects that had been suppressed or lost … He said during the period of the plays … of repressed histories being allowed to work on the world and this changing history and so on and so forth, Time literally changed. In texture but in other ways. How couldn’t it? He was he said, writing and staging a recovery play. Two actually, one about a recovery play he had found and the other – here I almost died again – about the fountain.</p></div>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Fragment</h3>



<p><em>Heraldrine in the night [unreadable] to the display room [unreadable] the arched windows show greenish sky.<br>There the glass object [unreadable] lit by a candle.</em><br><br><em>HERaldine [sic] takes a glass hammer and strikes.</em></p>



<p><em>Heraldrine, surrounded by broken glass touches the interior object and begins to speak. It is as if Heraldrine is reading the threads, finding subtle kinds in the changes of hue and incongruous patterns and weft and so on – rifts like a music score.</em></p>



<p><em>Heraldrine: For example [unreadable] truncated… erased, obscured, buried or simply lost… when in the world again, the form becomes available to us even if simply to talk about the work, to think about the object… experience it. But the … is operating on the world again … in a way that has not been permissible.</em></p>



<p>Here, for example, we learn what? That a herald of the city… came and was made privy to a great constitutional beauty presiding under the land.</p>



<p>That beneath the Undinous city great wefted [unreadable] for nothing and Melded thoroughly to the frothing and still and moving springs and the ore ore ore and black ore</p>



<p>In this book were patterns… ornaments… and illustrations of figures dancing… tapestries of figures dancing… older paintings on walls of peoples dancing in the carvings… in the chambers of the Undinous city to which I came. The undines, which appear in myth and not live here, were people from… who left their brothers and sisters to live with mortals – hence in the myth ‘takes the form of a beautiful man’</p>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-image-block"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/shola-elemendid3.png" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/shola-elemendid3-150x150.png 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/shola-elemendid3-300x136.png 300w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/shola-elemendid3-1024x465.png 1024w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/shola-elemendid3.png 1375w" data-sizes="auto" width="1375" height="625" alt="" class="lazyload"/><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>



<p>Hence in the myth ‘takes the form of the beautiful woman’</p>



<p>Hence in the myth ‘androgynous’</p>



<p>There’s a scene in a book I’ve never finished, in which the murals start moving over the walls… it’s… ornament… and indeed… early conceptions of ornament as flickering… light sand water to suggest some sort of motion or… the… pattern… grottos, cave walls and so on. And in the grottos – one in particular, was a pool and the grotto nymphs known as grottiness – really an ancient kind of undine swam there and passed in and out of the crystal walls and ate the pearls to remain as they were.</p>


shola veeb preview

The Undinous Court


<p><strong>Jan Verwoert </strong>is a critic and writer on contemporary art and cultural theory. He is a contributing editor of frieze magazine and his writing has appeared in different journals, anthologies and monographs.</p>


Jan Verwoert

komp

From Life. On the work of Anu Põder


<p><strong>Linda Kaljundi</strong> is a professor of cultural history at the Estonian Academy of Arts, a research fellow at Tallinn University, and a curator mainly co-operating with the Kumu Art Museum in Tallinn. She specializes on Baltic and Nordic history, cultural memory and environment, and currently works with the entanglements between art and science in the Eastern Baltic past and present.</p>


Linda Kaljundi

AM10558_G2060-scaled-landscape

Decolonise that – Estonian identity as indigenous and/or white

14 Emilie Saal in collaboration with Andres Saal, Tropical fruit still-life, overpainted photograph, c. 1910-1920. Courtesy of the Estonian Literature Museum

The Terrifying and Mundane Seduction of Orchids


<p><strong>Andreas Kalkun</strong> received his PhD degree in Estonian and Comparative Folklore at the University of Tartu and is currently working as a senior researcher at the Archival Library of the Estonian Literary Museum. His main area of study is the religion and the songs of the Seto women but he has also researched the history of folkloristics, the heritage of obscenities, and the LGBT history in Estonia.</p>


Andreas Kalkun


<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-image-block alignleft"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/jaanussamma_fotod.png" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/jaanussamma_fotod-150x150.png 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/jaanussamma_fotod-300x300.png 300w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/jaanussamma_fotod-1024x1024.png 1024w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/jaanussamma_fotod-789x788.png 789w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/jaanussamma_fotod-1014x1013.png 1014w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/jaanussamma_fotod-1126x1125.png 1126w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/jaanussamma_fotod-1351x1350.png 1351w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/jaanussamma_fotod.png 1443w" data-sizes="auto" width="1443" height="1442" alt="" class="lazyload"/><figcaption>Jaanus Samma, <em>Pattern no 25</em>, 2021. Crayon, 38&#215;38 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Temnikova &amp; Kasela Gallery</figcaption><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>



<p>At first glance, Jaanus Samma&#8217;s works resemble souvenirs with ethnographic motifs and some even evoke pure nationalist kitsch. This is, of course, a treacherous trap, set for the unsuspecting viewer. The artist seems to approach folk heritage and the past in the most conservative way possible; however, on closer inspection it becomes evident that the national ornament has, in fact, been stripped of pathos and solemnity – under the layer of ethnographic beauty bubbles an explosive mix of provocative questions. Jaanus Samma&#8217;s works have been discussed as homonationalist acts<sup class="modern-footnotes-footnote " data-mfn="1" data-mfn-post-scope="00000000625bd927000000001794270c_162"><a href="javascript:void(0)"  role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-00000000625bd927000000001794270c_162-1">1</a></sup><span id="mfn-content-00000000625bd927000000001794270c_162-1" role="tooltip" class="modern-footnotes-footnote__note" tabindex="0" data-mfn="1"> Toomistu, T. 15 May 2021. Homonatsionalismi kriipiv visioon. Available at: <a href="https://www.sirp.ee/s1-artiklid/c6-kunst/homonatsionalismi-kriipiv-visioon/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://www.sirp.ee/s1-artiklid/c6-kunst/homonatsionalismi-kriipiv-visioon/</a></span>, where the queer subject and their desires seem to have been secretly written into the national narrative and history. Indeed, Samma works with archives, historic museology and history and almost produces sugar-coated &#8216;monsters&#8217; to be incorporated into the heteronormative narrative of national history. Yet, these meek additions have the capacity to blow apart the heteronormative power matrix and the glossy images of nationalism.</p>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-image-block"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/20210505_0033-fotoMarjeEelma.jpg" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/20210505_0033-fotoMarjeEelma-150x150.jpg 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/20210505_0033-fotoMarjeEelma-300x200.jpg 300w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/20210505_0033-fotoMarjeEelma-1024x684.jpg 1024w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/20210505_0033-fotoMarjeEelma-1181x788.jpg 1181w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/20210505_0033-fotoMarjeEelma-1518x1013.jpg 1518w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/20210505_0033-fotoMarjeEelma-1685x1125.jpg 1685w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/20210505_0033-fotoMarjeEelma.jpg 2000w" data-sizes="auto" width="2000" height="1335" alt="" class="lazyload"/><figcaption>Jaanus Samma, <em>Pattern</em>, 2021. Exhibition view. Photo: Marje Eelma</figcaption><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Personal mythology</h2>



<p>At his recent exhibition (in collaboration with Carlos Motta) <em>Otherness, Desire, the Vernacular</em><sup class="modern-footnotes-footnote " data-mfn="2" data-mfn-post-scope="00000000625bd927000000001794270c_162"><a href="javascript:void(0)"  role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-00000000625bd927000000001794270c_162-2">2</a></sup><span id="mfn-content-00000000625bd927000000001794270c_162-2" role="tooltip" class="modern-footnotes-footnote__note" tabindex="0" data-mfn="2">Otherness, Desire, the Vernacular. In collaboration with Carlos Motta. 19 November 2021 – 16 January 2022. Curated by Denis Maksimov. Temnikova &amp; Kasela Gallery, Tallinn</span>, Samma exhibited a traditional woven wedding tapestry titled <em>Personal Mythology</em>. The tapestry was created using traditional materials and in the most &#8216;authentic&#8217; way possible – it was woven on anachronistically narrow looms and also includes errors in the pattern. The tapestry was a masterful imitation of a 19th century north Estonian tapestry, used during ritual wedding rides. Alongside traditional trees of life, tankards, churches and the traditional <em>kaheksakand</em> patterns, we also see symbols from the artist&#8217;s previous work. Among other things, the tapestry includes jockstraps, outhouses, a toilet pull, New Year&#8217;s Boys in costumes made of reed, directly and retrospectively referring to Samma&#8217;s earlier work. Instead of the heterosexual married couples usually depicted on wedding blankets, Samma is displaying decorative figures of men without shirts, also present in his earlier project <em>Applied Art for a Gay Club</em>. So, the form of a wedding tapestry is cunningly used to display secret symbols from the artist&#8217;s personal mythology that supposedly undermine heteronormativity in a non-violent manner.</p>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-image-block alignleft"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/jaanussamma_fotod2.png" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/jaanussamma_fotod2-150x150.png 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/jaanussamma_fotod2-300x300.png 300w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/jaanussamma_fotod2-1024x1024.png 1024w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/jaanussamma_fotod2-789x788.png 789w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/jaanussamma_fotod2-1014x1013.png 1014w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/jaanussamma_fotod2-1126x1125.png 1126w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/jaanussamma_fotod2-1351x1350.png 1351w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/jaanussamma_fotod2.png 1443w" data-sizes="auto" width="1443" height="1442" alt="" class="lazyload"/><figcaption>Jaanus Samma, <em>Pattern no 27</em>, 2021. Crayon, 38&#215;38 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Temnikova &amp; Kasela Gallery</figcaption><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-image-block alignleft"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/20210505_0133-fotoMarjeEelma.jpg" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/20210505_0133-fotoMarjeEelma-150x150.jpg 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/20210505_0133-fotoMarjeEelma-300x200.jpg 300w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/20210505_0133-fotoMarjeEelma-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/20210505_0133-fotoMarjeEelma-1181x788.jpg 1181w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/20210505_0133-fotoMarjeEelma-1519x1013.jpg 1519w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/20210505_0133-fotoMarjeEelma-1687x1125.jpg 1687w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/20210505_0133-fotoMarjeEelma.jpg 2000w" data-sizes="auto" width="2000" height="1334" alt="" class="lazyload"/><figcaption>Jaanus Samma, <em>Pattern</em>, 2021. Exhibition view (detail). Photo: Marje Eelma</figcaption><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Noble and dirty patterns</h2>



<p>At the exhibition <em>Pattern</em>, Samma exhibited 19th century coifs (<em>tanu</em>), on loan from the Estonian National Museum, side by side with drawings and embroidery inspired by the headwear. With these works, Samma continues exploring the hidden cruising culture and fetishes in gay communities, also present in his previous projects. Here, the focus is on men&#8217;s underwear and jockstraps, provocatively decorated with perfectly executed national floral embroidery. The coif signalled the wearer to be a married woman – Estonian peasant women had to wear these daily as a symbol of that status. Furthermore, as part of a wedding ritual, the freshly married woman was slapped on the head or in the face with the coif and told, ‘…forget sleep and remember your husband!’ The beautifully embroidered coif was a sign that the woman was no longer single, and moreover, it was also meant to remind her of her position within that union at all times.</p>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-image-block alignleft"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/jaanussamma_fotod3.png" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/jaanussamma_fotod3-150x150.png 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/jaanussamma_fotod3-300x300.png 300w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/jaanussamma_fotod3-1024x1024.png 1024w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/jaanussamma_fotod3-789x788.png 789w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/jaanussamma_fotod3-1014x1013.png 1014w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/jaanussamma_fotod3-1126x1125.png 1126w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/jaanussamma_fotod3-1351x1350.png 1351w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/jaanussamma_fotod3.png 1443w" data-sizes="auto" width="1443" height="1442" alt="" class="lazyload"/><figcaption>Jaanus Samma, <em>Pattern no 19</em>, 2020. Crayon, watercolour, 38&#215;38 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Temnikova &amp; Kasela Gallery</figcaption><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>



<p>These embroidered patterns, created by illiterate women are the only letters we have of them. We could say that these patterns are essentially and specifically &#8216;Estonian&#8217;, but obviously, international fashions have not left the work of these women untouched either. These baroque floral patterns, originally from north Estonia, acquired strong nationalist associations only later on, at the beginning of the 20th century, when the Estonian National Museum acquired the most aesthetic and &#8216;authentically Estonian&#8217; examples of garments for their collections and these became known as folk dress. The founders of the museum hoped that based on the items they collected, local artists and applied artists could develop an idiosyncratic Estonian national style. With a layover as a tool for the Estonian authoritarian regime of the 1930s, these patterns also made it into art of the Stalinist era and are still represented in conservative nationalist applied art in full glory today.</p>



<p>Looking from a distance, Jaanus Samma&#8217;s dignified flower motif wreath drawings would fit well in both the castle of Konstantin Päts, the authoritarian president of Estonia, as well as a Stalinist palace of culture; however, taking a closer look, we see that this is not sincere national kitsch after all. What meanings emerge when patterns stolen from the coifs of married women come to decorate jockstraps as part of the hidden heritage of gay culture? Is this a homonationalist incursion into the heritage of Estonian national ethnography or the grief of the queer subject recently declared incapable of marriage<sup class="modern-footnotes-footnote " data-mfn="3" data-mfn-post-scope="00000000625bd927000000001794270c_162"><a href="javascript:void(0)"  role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-00000000625bd927000000001794270c_162-3">3</a></sup><span id="mfn-content-00000000625bd927000000001794270c_162-3" role="tooltip" class="modern-footnotes-footnote__note" tabindex="0" data-mfn="3">In November 2021, the Legal Affairs Committee of the Estonian Parliament released a statement regarding the current Family Law in Estonia, saying that it is not discriminatory as it does not prohibit marriage to anyone who is capable of marriage. The capability, however, is defined by the Family Law, which states that marriage is concluded between a man and a woman. With this statement, the Legal Affairs Committee essentially declared anyone in a non-heterosexual relationship incapable of marriage. (– Ed.)</span>, and dipped in glamour?</p>


jaanussamma_fotod

Sickly-Sweet Monsters at the Ethnography Museum


<p><strong>Brit Pavelson</strong> is a graphic designer based in Tallinn, Estonia. Her work is currently driven by decorative practices in graphic design, for their healing power, sustainability potential and vessels for intuitive storytelling.</p>


Brit Pavelson


<p><em>Market Values</em> is a search for an aesthetic expression that is situated in a space between the post-Soviet legacy, rich folk craft traditions, inborn admiration for modernism and an uncritical adoration of Scandinavian minimalism. Working on this project has been a long brewing process, reminding me of making what my family calls <em>ümbermajatee</em> or outside-the-house- tea. This tea has no set formula, it is made by simply pouring hot water on any aromatic weed you can find outside your house in the summer. <em>Ümbermajatee</em> is utterly seasonal and coincidental but also strongly situated in its surroundings. The tea is a bit different every day. It does not subscribe to any recipe or specific historical background; it is not credited to anyone in particular and is created by simply observing what is mulling around me. Offline and outside. The following pages are posters made in 2020 that have been reformatted for magazine pages in 2022. You can find more at <a href="http://www.marketvalues.ee" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">www.marketvalues.ee</a> or find me online <a href="http://pafkabrit" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">@pafkabrit</a>.</p>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-image-block"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/28.02.kissell-1-scaled.jpg" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/28.02.kissell-1-150x150.jpg 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/28.02.kissell-1-300x199.jpg 300w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/28.02.kissell-1-1024x678.jpg 1024w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/28.02.kissell-1-1190x788.jpg 1190w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/28.02.kissell-1-1529x1013.jpg 1529w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/28.02.kissell-1-1698x1125.jpg 1698w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/28.02.kissell-1-2038x1350.jpg 2038w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/28.02.kissell-1-2718x1800.jpg 2718w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/28.02.kissell-1-2973x1969.jpg 2973w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/28.02.kissell-1-scaled.jpg 2560w" data-sizes="auto" width="2560" height="1696" alt="" class="lazyload"/><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-image-block"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/28.02.kissell2-scaled.jpg" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/28.02.kissell2-150x150.jpg 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/28.02.kissell2-300x196.jpg 300w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/28.02.kissell2-1024x669.jpg 1024w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/28.02.kissell2-1205x788.jpg 1205w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/28.02.kissell2-1550x1013.jpg 1550w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/28.02.kissell2-1721x1125.jpg 1721w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/28.02.kissell2-2065x1350.jpg 2065w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/28.02.kissell2-2754x1800.jpg 2754w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/28.02.kissell2-3012x1969.jpg 3012w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/28.02.kissell2-scaled.jpg 2560w" data-sizes="auto" width="2560" height="1674" alt="" class="lazyload"/><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-image-block"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/ajakiri_29.033-scaled.jpg" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/ajakiri_29.033-150x150.jpg 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/ajakiri_29.033-300x199.jpg 300w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/ajakiri_29.033-1024x678.jpg 1024w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/ajakiri_29.033-1190x788.jpg 1190w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/ajakiri_29.033-1529x1013.jpg 1529w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/ajakiri_29.033-1698x1125.jpg 1698w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/ajakiri_29.033-2038x1350.jpg 2038w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/ajakiri_29.033-2718x1800.jpg 2718w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/ajakiri_29.033-2973x1969.jpg 2973w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/ajakiri_29.033-scaled.jpg 2560w" data-sizes="auto" width="2560" height="1696" alt="" class="lazyload"/><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-image-block"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/ajakiri_29.034-scaled.jpg" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/ajakiri_29.034-150x150.jpg 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/ajakiri_29.034-300x199.jpg 300w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/ajakiri_29.034-1024x678.jpg 1024w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/ajakiri_29.034-1190x788.jpg 1190w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/ajakiri_29.034-1529x1013.jpg 1529w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/ajakiri_29.034-1698x1125.jpg 1698w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/ajakiri_29.034-2038x1350.jpg 2038w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/ajakiri_29.034-2718x1800.jpg 2718w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/ajakiri_29.034-2973x1969.jpg 2973w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/ajakiri_29.034-scaled.jpg 2560w" data-sizes="auto" width="2560" height="1696" alt="" class="lazyload"/><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>


ma_vc_brit_pavelson_1

Market Values


<p><strong>Piret Karro</strong> is a cultural critic and curator based in Tallinn. Her academic background lies in Gender Studies and Semiotics, and she is currently the Head of Exhibitions at Vabamu museum.</p>


Piret Karro


<p><strong>Hanna Samoson</strong> explores the boundaries of art and tries to perceive the unknown. Being in constant motion as an intuitive creator, her work is characterized by quick and spontaneous decisions. Since the beginning of 2022, he has been searching for her dream along the 2222 islands belonging to Estonia.</p>


Hanna Samoson


<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-image-block alignleft"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/teine1.jpg" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/teine1-150x150.jpg 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/teine1-200x300.jpg 200w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/teine1-684x1024.jpg 684w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/teine1-526x788.jpg 526w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/teine1-677x1013.jpg 677w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/teine1-751x1125.jpg 751w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/teine1-902x1350.jpg 902w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/teine1-1202x1800.jpg 1202w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/teine1-1315x1969.jpg 1315w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/teine1.jpg 1416w" data-sizes="auto" width="1416" height="2120" alt="" class="lazyload"/><figcaption>Photo: Hanna Samoson</figcaption><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>



<p>Diana Tamane is an artist from Riga, Latvia, currently based in Tartu, Estonia. In her practice, she explores the line between the intimate and the artistic, using photos, drawings and videos from her family archives or images created in dialogue with her family members. Her recent exhibitions include <em>Antibiography</em> at the Centre d&#8217;Art Maristany, Spain, <em>Allied</em> at the Kyiv Biennial 2021, and <em>Flower Smugglers</em> as part of the Frame of Sopot Photography Festival, Poland. Her artist book <em>Flower Smuggler</em> received the Author’s Book Award at Recontres d’Arles and was shortlisted for the Aperture First Photobook Awards in 2020. Perhaps this work is a good example of her practice – Tamane used photographs her grandmother had taken of the flowers she had either grown in her garden or had been gifted and combined these with a story of her grandmother being denied passage across the Latvian-Russian border with flowers she wanted to bring to her grandfather’s grave in an area annexed from Latvia by the USSR in 1945. Through combining the personal with the political, Tamane has a unique way of shining light on geopolitical realities through the lived experiences of ordinary people, her close ones. We meet on my 31st birthday and one day after her 36th birthday, over a table of tulips and cake in her home in Tartu, to discuss how she feels about her art being read as feminist, women’s power, and the turning point from trauma to healing that has provoked a change in her artistic position.</p>



<div class="q-and-a" class="wp-block-www-blocks-q-and-a-block"><div class="question"><p>How is the cake?</p></div><div class="answer"><p>It’s really good, thank you! So, there is even a birthday cake this year. Now the day is complete.</p></div></div>



<div class="q-and-a" class="wp-block-www-blocks-q-and-a-block"><div class="question"><p>You were telling me about how you didn’t speak Estonian when you came to Tartu Art School, so you felt like your works needed to speak for themselves. How did it happen that you are still living here 15 years later?</p></div><div class="answer"><p>I started studying in an art school in Latvia when I was 12. There, I took academic drawing, painting and sculpture, but in the last year we also had a photography class. I fell in love with the process of developing in the dark room. I would stay late and lose track of time. After I graduated from high school, Tartu Art College seemed like a good option, as there was nowhere to study photography in Latvia. After moving to Tartu, I travelled a lot and lived in different countries. For a year I went to Portugal as an Erasmus student, then moved to Barcelona to do an internship. After I graduated from Tartu, I moved to Brussels for my master’s degree and continued at HISK’s (Hoger Instituut Voor Schone Kunsten – Vlaanderen) art residency programme for two years in Ghent. I was planning to stay in Belgium because it was going well. I had received several awards and grants, but at some point, I realised they don’t really need me there. There are so many artists in Belgium already. For some reason, I never allowed myself to consider going back to Estonia. Then one day I realised I could, and I felt such relief, so I packed my stuff and left. Here it’s different, there is space to evolve and it feels like home at the moment.</p></div></div>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-image-block aligncenter"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/diana001.jpg" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/diana001-150x150.jpg 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/diana001-200x300.jpg 200w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/diana001-684x1024.jpg 684w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/diana001-526x788.jpg 526w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/diana001-677x1013.jpg 677w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/diana001-751x1125.jpg 751w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/diana001-902x1350.jpg 902w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/diana001-1202x1800.jpg 1202w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/diana001-1315x1969.jpg 1315w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/diana001.jpg 1416w" data-sizes="auto" width="1416" height="2120" alt="" class="lazyload"/><figcaption>Photo: Hanna Samoson</figcaption><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>



<div class="q-and-a" class="wp-block-www-blocks-q-and-a-block"><div class="question"><p>How come you felt you could go back to Estonia, and not to Latvia?</p></div><div class="answer"><p>It’s like I had two lives. Before I was 20 and after. I cannot imagine that I would go back to Latvia. When I arrived in Tartu, I immediately felt in sync with the city, like its rhythm and my own were moving at the same pace.</p></div></div>



<div class="q-and-a" class="wp-block-www-blocks-q-and-a-block"><div class="question"><p>Looking at some of your works, I started thinking about the misogynist attitude that prioritises the “official” history, often written by men – an example of this is monuments of men on horses, whereas small personal details like family photos or diaries remain less visible. For example, looking at the photo series Family Portrait depicting your mother’s lineage, or the work Blood Pressure showing your great grandmother’s notes documenting her blood pressure readings on the backs of the photos from her personal album. Many of these items might look insignificant, but they are important to someone. Do you find yourself conflicted about crossing the boundary between a photograph as your grandmother’s personal item and exhibiting it as a piece of art?</p></div><div class="answer"><p>Daily rituals take a lot of time and have great importance in our lives. They can be considered insignificant by some, but it’s what really carries us. As an artist you are like a magician. It is here [<em>points as if at an object</em>] but it doesn’t mean anything. As an artist, I take it, bring it, let’s say into a white cube – and it is like baptizing it, the object becomes sacred.</p></div></div>



<div class="q-and-a" class="wp-block-www-blocks-q-and-a-block"><div class="question"><p>Regarding personal rituals, did your birthday yesterday have any special meaning for you?</p></div><div class="answer"><p>I started the day in the way I wish more days would start – slowly, with warm lemon water, meditation, reading, and afterwards I went to a 5Rhythm dance class. In the evening, my friend came over for dinner. I would love it if this year was about slowing down, connecting to things and people who bring me joy.</p><p>I want to do things differently, to be a better friend to myself. Sometimes we know what we should do, but it hasn’t yet settled into our system, into our body. But now I feel some things are settling down for me. I mean I can still push myself sometimes, but I really have started to feel that always running somewhere is violence against myself.</p></div></div>



<div class="q-and-a" class="wp-block-www-blocks-q-and-a-block"><div class="question"><p>A lot of your work is auto-biographical or auto-ethnographic; it includes conversations with your family or observes your father in the garden. Among other things, these are feminist methods. Some of your work is probably read as feminist art. How do you feel about that?</p></div><div class="answer"><p>I prefer not to be put into a box, any box. Of course, I am feminist, but that’s not the place I make my work from. My fear is that when we say it’s a feminist work then people don’t see that there are so many other layers. But I am interested in women&#8217;s experiences and want to tell stories about women in a way that would support them. I’ve sometimes had an issue with the feminist vibe – in my eyes it creates a division between men and women. But it is time to take responsibility and acknowledge that both men as well as women have contributed to the patriarchal system. Of course, there are the sad statistics that every fourth woman has experienced physical or sexual abuse and we carry these traumas in our bodies. Most of us have trauma, personal or collective. We can stick with it, but we can also choose to let it go. It’s time for women to appreciate themselves. We can do a lot, we can give birth, we can have careers, be artists, healers, truck drivers like my mother, and I think women’s choices need to be honoured. A woman should also be supported if she chooses to be around the kitchen and raise children.</p></div></div>



<div class="q-and-a" class="wp-block-www-blocks-q-and-a-block"><div class="question"><p>That statement is also feminist.</p></div><div class="answer"><p>Yeah, it is.</p></div></div>



<div class="q-and-a" class="wp-block-www-blocks-q-and-a-block"><div class="question"><p><em>We wanted to talk about women. What are your latest revelations regarding being a woman?</em></p></div><div class="answer"><p>In recent years, I’ve realised that honouring the cycle is important. The daily cycles, seasons of the year and the menstrual cycle – through these we connect to nature and to ourselves. Based on what I have experienced and what I have also heard from my female friends, issues around menstruation were never discussed with us by our mothers or were talked about in a negative way. But I think it’s a gateway to our power and a place of wisdom. It used to be something that I never paid attention to. Now I have a different approach. It’s like you have these four phases [<em>menstruation, follicular phase, ovulation, luteal phase</em> – P.K.] connected to the seasons, there are phases when we must rest and when we are more productive and I try to respect that. There are times we are invited to go inwards and times when we are more communicative and open. It is very interesting for me to navigate all that, how at some point I am overwhelmed by a range of emotions, everything comes to the surface, it can feel dark and deep, but then I look at what my body wants to tell me: what needs my attention, what needs change. Maybe not every woman feels this, but I personally feel those phases strongly.</p></div></div>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-image-block alignright"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/taim.jpg" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/taim-150x150.jpg 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/taim-200x300.jpg 200w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/taim-684x1024.jpg 684w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/taim-526x788.jpg 526w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/taim-677x1013.jpg 677w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/taim-751x1125.jpg 751w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/taim-902x1350.jpg 902w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/taim-1202x1800.jpg 1202w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/taim-1315x1969.jpg 1315w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/taim.jpg 1416w" data-sizes="auto" width="1416" height="2120" alt="" class="lazyload"/><figcaption>Photo: Hanna Samoson</figcaption><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>



<div class="q-and-a" class="wp-block-www-blocks-q-and-a-block"><div class="question"><p>You have exhibitions coming up at the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM) in Tallinn and at Tartu Art Museum and Kogo gallery in Tartu. You mentioned that you feel like you are at a turning point as an artist. Could you tell me more about that?</p></div><div class="answer"><p>In a way, my upcoming exhibitions at EKKM and Kogo gallery summarise my practice of the last decade. The EKKM exhibition Typology of Touch summarises the works related to the female lineage of my family, which have been completed during the last 12 years. At Kogo gallery, I will show my latest project <em>Under the Same Sky</em>. It’s an installation and a documentary film about three generations of women – the grandmother Tamara, who was born in Ukraine; the mother Irina, born in the Latvian SSR; and the daughter Sonya, who is half-Korean and grew up in Spain. For the last 17 years, the family has been living in the tourist city of Fuengirola in Costa del Sol, Spain.</p><p>But these days I am making more intuitive work. For example, I make drawings which are partly based on meditation and breathwork – I synchronise my breath with my drawing, I am interested in the use of the psychosomatic method in art.</p><p>I used to be interested in some sort of tension. Now I feel another kind of energy and perhaps I can start a new chapter. I would like to be more present, and to communicate more joy for life. I remember a long time ago a friend of mine said something about Louise Bourgeois: “You know it’s sad that she held on to her pain until the end”. It’s important to let go of things that do not serve us, to be transformed as humans and see where it brings us as artists.</p></div></div>



<div class="q-and-a" class="wp-block-www-blocks-q-and-a-block"><div class="question"><p>Would you say that your previous work was created from a place of trauma?</p></div><div class="answer"><p>I like what curator Martin Germann said about family in relation to my work: “It is a room or matrix we will never leave, and if we escape it, we inevitably escape in relation to it.” It’s a way of dealing with certain issues and finding a way to communicate. For me this became my language for speaking to them, it opened communication between us.</p></div></div>



<div class="q-and-a" class="wp-block-www-blocks-q-and-a-block"><div class="question"><p>So, you feel that art is your language to speak not only to the art audience but to your family as well?</p></div><div class="answer"><p>Yes, it’s like a thread that facilitates connection. It’s my love language.</p></div></div>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-image-block"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/002-scaled.jpg" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/002-150x150.jpg 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/002-300x200.jpg 300w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/002-1024x684.jpg 1024w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/002-1180x788.jpg 1180w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/002-1516x1013.jpg 1516w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/002-1684x1125.jpg 1684w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/002-2021x1350.jpg 2021w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/002-2695x1800.jpg 2695w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/002-2948x1969.jpg 2948w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/002-scaled.jpg 2560w" data-sizes="auto" width="2560" height="1710" alt="" class="lazyload"/><figcaption>Photo: Hanna Samoson</figcaption><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>


From Family Photo Albums to the White Cube – Interview with Diana Tamane

Helgi Saldo2021 Fotograaf Kristina Kuzemko @z.o.lo.to

Searching for a label: The New East


<h2 class="wp-block-heading">TOP PICKS</h2>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-image-block"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/10-scaled.jpg" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/10-150x150.jpg 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/10-300x169.jpg 300w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/10-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/10-1400x788.jpg 1400w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/10-1800x1013.jpg 1800w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/10-2000x1125.jpg 2000w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/10-2400x1350.jpg 2400w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/10-3000x1688.jpg 3000w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/10-3500x1969.jpg 3500w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/10-scaled.jpg 2560w" data-sizes="auto" width="2560" height="1440" alt="" class="lazyload"/><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>



<div class="event-info" class="wp-block-www-blocks-event-info-block"><div><h3 class="title">Tallinn Art Hall will open in a new location</h3><div class="location01"><p>Lasnamäe Pavilion (Lindakivi square), Tallinn</p></div><div class="description01"><p>While Tallinn Art Hall’s historical building is being renovated, the Art Hall will open in a new location in the district of Lasnamäe in Autumn 2022. The highlights of the 2022 programme include <em>Barricading the Ice Sheets</em>, an exhibition by Oliver Ressler (curated by Corina L. Apostol, 27 August – 6 November) still in the historical building, and a group show <em>Is There Hope for Lovely Creatures?</em> (curator: Tamara Luuk, 26 November – 5 February) in the new locationn.</p></div></div><div><h3 class="title">An overview of Estonian art of the 2000s</h3><div class="location02"><p>Kumu Art Museum, Tallinn</p><p>Until 10 October </p></div><div class="description02"><p>The exhibition Art in the Comfort Zone? The 2000s in Estonian Art offers insights into the art of the noughties. The exhibition is curated by Eha Komissarov and Triin Tulgiste.</p></div></div></div>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-image-block"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Herkki-Erich-Merila-Arbo-Tammiksaar.-Welcome-to-Estonia-2002-Tartu-Art-Museum-1170x1800-raamita.jpg" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Herkki-Erich-Merila-Arbo-Tammiksaar.-Welcome-to-Estonia-2002-Tartu-Art-Museum-1170x1800-raamita-150x150.jpg 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Herkki-Erich-Merila-Arbo-Tammiksaar.-Welcome-to-Estonia-2002-Tartu-Art-Museum-1170x1800-raamita-195x300.jpg 195w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Herkki-Erich-Merila-Arbo-Tammiksaar.-Welcome-to-Estonia-2002-Tartu-Art-Museum-1170x1800-raamita-666x1024.jpg 666w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Herkki-Erich-Merila-Arbo-Tammiksaar.-Welcome-to-Estonia-2002-Tartu-Art-Museum-1170x1800-raamita-512x788.jpg 512w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Herkki-Erich-Merila-Arbo-Tammiksaar.-Welcome-to-Estonia-2002-Tartu-Art-Museum-1170x1800-raamita-658x1013.jpg 658w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Herkki-Erich-Merila-Arbo-Tammiksaar.-Welcome-to-Estonia-2002-Tartu-Art-Museum-1170x1800-raamita-731x1125.jpg 731w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Herkki-Erich-Merila-Arbo-Tammiksaar.-Welcome-to-Estonia-2002-Tartu-Art-Museum-1170x1800-raamita-878x1350.jpg 878w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Herkki-Erich-Merila-Arbo-Tammiksaar.-Welcome-to-Estonia-2002-Tartu-Art-Museum-1170x1800-raamita.jpg 1170w" data-sizes="auto" width="1170" height="1800" alt="" class="lazyload"/><figcaption>Herkki-Erich Merila, Arbo Tammiksaar. <em>Welcome to Estonia 2002</em>, Tartu Art Museum</figcaption><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>



<div class="event-info" class="wp-block-www-blocks-event-info-block"><div><h3 class="title">Diana Tamane solo shows Typology of Touch and Half Love </h3><div class="location01"><p>Typology of Touch, EKKM, 14 April – 5 June (Tallinn)<br>Half Love, Tartu Art Museum, 17 June – 16 October (Tartu)</p></div><div class="description01"><p>Artist Diana Tamane presents two solo shows simultaneously at EKKM in Tallinn, and Tartu Art Museum in Tartu. Tamane often uses her family members and herself as the leading characters in her work. The personal dimension in stories about Eastern European life allows for generalizations about how identity in the region has been shaped during the transitional period. </p></div></div><div><div class="location02"></div><div class="description02"></div></div></div>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">RECOMMENDED</h2>



<div class="event-info" class="wp-block-www-blocks-event-info-block"><div><h3 class="title">Agents of Perception</h3><div class="location01"><p>Kai Art Center, Tallinn<br>9 April – 26 June </p></div><div class="description01"><p>The exhibition presents six artists – the German <em>ars viva prize</em> winners for 2022, Lewis Hammond, Tamina Amadyar and Mooni Perry, and three remarkable emerging artists from the Baltic region Laura Põld, Anastasia Sosunova and Janis Dzirnieks. The curator of the exhibition is Maria Helen Känd.</p></div></div><div><h3 class="title">Pine-fulness</h3><div class="location02"><p>Vana-Võromaa Culture House Gallery, Võru<br>6 May – 26 June </p></div><div class="description02"><p>The exhibition deals with the relationship between Estonians and their natural environment. Using bitter humour and sustainable gestures, the show attempts to raise awareness of the impact of today’s actions on our dream future. The exhibition is curated by Siim Preiman (Tallinn Art Hall).</p></div></div></div>



<div class="event-info" class="wp-block-www-blocks-event-info-block"><div><h3 class="title">Group exhibition Where is the Body</h3><div class="location01"><p>Narva Art Residency, Narva<br>7 May – 8 June </p></div><div class="description01"><p>Taking place in two chapters in Vienna and Narva, the exhibition initiates dialogues between a generation of upcoming artists, while aiming to find common ground within the diverse scope of contemporary painterly expressions. The show is curated by Lilian Hiob and Julius Pristauz.</p></div></div><div><h3 class="title">Curatorial show by Jurriaan Benschop</h3><div class="location02"><p>Kogo gallery, Tartu<br>30 June – 27 August</p></div><div class="description02"><p>The show, curated by Jurriaan Benschop with artists Veronika Hilger (Munich), Milla Aska (Helsinki) and Paula Zarina-Zemane (Riga), introduces three contemporary painters.</p></div></div></div>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-image-block"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Diana-Tamane_Family-Portrait_video-still-scaled.jpeg" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Diana-Tamane_Family-Portrait_video-still-150x150.jpeg 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Diana-Tamane_Family-Portrait_video-still-300x168.jpeg 300w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Diana-Tamane_Family-Portrait_video-still-1024x575.jpeg 1024w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Diana-Tamane_Family-Portrait_video-still-1400x786.jpeg 1400w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Diana-Tamane_Family-Portrait_video-still-1800x1010.jpeg 1800w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Diana-Tamane_Family-Portrait_video-still-2000x1122.jpeg 2000w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Diana-Tamane_Family-Portrait_video-still-2400x1347.jpeg 2400w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Diana-Tamane_Family-Portrait_video-still-scaled.jpeg 2560w" data-sizes="auto" width="2560" height="1436" alt="" class="lazyload"/><figcaption>Diana Tamane, <em>Family Portrait</em>. Video still</figcaption><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>



<div class="event-info" class="wp-block-www-blocks-event-info-block"><div><h3 class="title">VIII Artishok Biennial </h3><div class="location01"><p>Tallinn Botanical Garden, Tallinn<br>29 September – 30 October</p></div><div class="description01"><p>8th Artishok Biennial, curated by Ann Mirjam Vaikla, brings together 10 international artists and 10 art critics at the botanical garden, which will become the site of and for collective learning/unlearning for the invited participants. During the opening marathon 10 commissioned artworks will be presented, each of them accompanied by newly written critical texts. The final exhibition and collection of texts offers visitors 100 different ways to interpret the artworks and their artists.</p></div></div><div><h3 class="title">Solo show by Taavi Suisalu Attention Figures</h3><div class="location02"><p>EKKM, Tallinn<br>27 August – 16 October</p></div><div class="description02"><p>The largest solo show of Tallinn based artist Taavi Suisalu deals with the changing self-image in the era of algorithmic imagination, attention economy and rapidly developing technologies.</p></div></div></div>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">BEYOND</h2>



<p><em>When visiting Estonia, it is easy to plan a short visit to Helsinki (2-hour ferry ride from Tallinn) or Riga (4-hour bus ride from Tallinn or Tartu)</em></p>



<div class="event-info" class="wp-block-www-blocks-event-info-block"><div><h3 class="title">Estonian artists in dialogue with the Helsinki Art Museum collection</h3><div class="location01"><p>Helsinki Art Museum HAM, Helsinki<br>2 February – 29 May</p></div><div class="description01"><p>Curator Denis Maksimov has invited five Estonian artists to each respond to a work from the HAM collection by choosing an existing artwork of their own to be exhibited alongside the collection piece.</p></div></div><div><h3 class="title">Kiasma, the contemporary art museum in Helsinki, reopens with ARS22</h3><div class="location02"><p>Kiasma Art Museum, Helsinki<br>8 April – 16 October</p></div><div class="description02"><p>Extending to all floors of the Kiasma building, exhibition is a comprehensive view of the latest trends in international contemporary art. The exhibition culminates in autumn 2022 with the Lithuanian participatory opera <em>Sun and Sea</em>.</p></div></div></div>



<div class="event-info" class="wp-block-www-blocks-event-info-block"><div><h3 class="title">International art festival SURVIVAL KIT 13 – The little bird must be caught</h3><div class="location01"><p>2 September – 9 October<br>Various locations in Riga</p></div><div class="description01"><p>The annual art festival SURVIVAL KIT will this year be inspired by the title of a poem by Ojārs Vācietis. The poem, forever timely, directs us towards questions related to free speech, the power of the voice and the vocal, the role of the sonic in resistance, revolution and dissent, and those that wish to silence such voices.</p></div></div><div><div class="location02"></div><div class="description02"></div></div></div>


Herkki-Erich-Merila-Arbo-Tammiksaar.-Welcome-to-Estonia-2002-Tartu-Art-Museum-1170×1800 raamita

Your guide to Estonia and beyond 2022

A Shade Colder is a platform for discussions about and around art in Estonia and beyond.

A Shade Colder

digikaas

Flesh in Tension


<p>The 2023 summer issue of A Shade Colder, <em>Flesh in Tension</em> takes a closer look at fleshy matters. Our flesh and body shape our day-to-day existence as much as our intellect and emotions, it cannot be separated from how we perceive and are perceived in the world. It allows us to be human and, in fact, makes us human – a significant part of our particularities and specific experiences exist within our flesh. Our flesh and body often determine how we are perceived and perceive ourselves and does so before anything else. These perceptions are influenced by a variety of social, historical, economic and cultural forces, a network of systems chafing against human flesh – wearing, grinding, elevating, exciting, cultivating us into what we are constantly becoming, while we try to persist and sustain ourselves. To delve deeper into the tensions between these systems and the flesh, the issue features texts on work, gender, performance, stereotypes, architecture and disability.</p>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-image-block alignleft"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/asc5-veebi-copy-1-scaled.jpg" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/asc5-veebi-copy-1-150x150.jpg 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/asc5-veebi-copy-1-292x300.jpg 292w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/asc5-veebi-copy-1-997x1024.jpg 997w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/asc5-veebi-copy-1-767x788.jpg 767w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/asc5-veebi-copy-1-986x1013.jpg 986w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/asc5-veebi-copy-1-1095x1125.jpg 1095w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/asc5-veebi-copy-1-1314x1350.jpg 1314w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/asc5-veebi-copy-1-1752x1800.jpg 1752w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/asc5-veebi-copy-1-1916x1969.jpg 1916w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/asc5-veebi-copy-1-scaled.jpg 2492w" data-sizes="auto" width="2492" height="2560" alt="" class="lazyload"/><figcaption>Illustration: Martina Gofman &amp; Johanna Ruukholm, <em>Flesh in Tension</em>, 2023</figcaption><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>



<p><strong>Airi Triisberg</strong> writes about the importance of sustaining yourself materially in a precarious world, more precisely about wages for art work, accompanied by visuals by <strong>Zody Burke</strong>. In his interview with <strong>Heneliis Notton</strong> Samira Elagoz discusses performing gender and the gendered gaze in his newest film <em>Seeking Bromance</em>. Exploring the appeal of blonde hair both in Estonian art and among women, <strong>Marge Monko</strong> takes a closer look at the role of genetics, national imagery and pop culture.</p>



<p><strong>Ingrid Ruudi</strong> writes about bodies existing within regimes that gladly render them invisible, disregard their needs and particularities, uncovering the spatial politics of disability in late Soviet Estonia. Looking further into the relationship between architecture and bodies, <strong>Kaarin Kivirähk</strong> interviews Aet Ader, Arvi Anderson and Mari Möldre about their project <em>Home Stage</em>, presented at this year’s Architecture Biennale in Venice, focusing on the contradiction of homes as a place to create a life in and a piece of real estate with exchange value. And in their poem <strong>nick von kleist</strong> invites the reader to spiral between nature and screens, as much as bodied or disembodied tensions in the reader allow.</p>



<p>Of course, tension can produce alertness, anxiety or make a person freeze in their flow to examine the systems that rub away at their fleshy bits. But there also can be pleasure and playfulness in tension – so perhaps it is better to really gaze deeply into this tension from time to time rather than let it slowly eat away at our tender flesh.</p>


Editorial. Flesh in Tension


<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-image-block alignleft"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-2-copy-scaled.jpg" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-2-copy-150x150.jpg 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-2-copy-300x279.jpg 300w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-2-copy-1024x951.jpg 1024w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-2-copy-848x788.jpg 848w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-2-copy-1091x1013.jpg 1091w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-2-copy-1211x1125.jpg 1211w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-2-copy-1454x1350.jpg 1454w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-2-copy-1938x1800.jpg 1938w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-2-copy-2120x1969.jpg 2120w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-2-copy-scaled.jpg 2560w" data-sizes="auto" width="2560" height="2378" alt="" class="lazyload"/><figcaption>Zody Burke, <em>Artist in Studio</em>, 2023</figcaption><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>



<p>According to a recent wage survey, the average monthly income of art practitioners in Estonia is 600 euros<sup class="modern-footnotes-footnote " data-mfn="1" data-mfn-post-scope="000000007736385300000000408d891b_2169"><a href="javascript:void(0)"  role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-000000007736385300000000408d891b_2169-1">1</a></sup><span id="mfn-content-000000007736385300000000408d891b_2169-1" role="tooltip" class="modern-footnotes-footnote__note" tabindex="0" data-mfn="1">Koppel, K., Arrak, K., Konov, V., Parts, R. 2023. <em>Loometöö tasustamine Eestis ja loomepalkade mõju hindamine</em>. Civitta Eesti AS, 2023.</span>. This number is lower than the national minimum wage and reflects an international trend – visual art is among the lowest earning branches in the cultural sector.&nbsp; One strategy to improve working conditions is establishing criteria for fair pay. Such fair pay guidelines are usually developed by artist unions and advocacy organisations; however, in Estonia the process was initiated at the grassroots level. Together with Maarin Ektermann, we consulted with nearly 70 colleagues to develop a fair pay proposal that would consider the particularities of the Estonian tax system<sup class="modern-footnotes-footnote " data-mfn="2" data-mfn-post-scope="000000007736385300000000408d891b_2169"><a href="javascript:void(0)"  role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-000000007736385300000000408d891b_2169-2">2</a></sup><span id="mfn-content-000000007736385300000000408d891b_2169-2" role="tooltip" class="modern-footnotes-footnote__note" tabindex="0" data-mfn="2">Ektermann, M., Triisberg, A. 2022. <em>Õiglaste tasumäärade ettepanek kunstivaldkonnale</em>. Kodutud tekstid. Available at: <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/17DpQeLDIrUcPae2GHkS6gblqLevKzU7Q/view">KT_töövihik_elektrooniline_05.01.22.pdf</a></span>.</p>



<p>The proposal focuses on exhibition making, which is a core activity in the art sector. Participating in exhibitions should generate substantial income for art workers; however, this is currently not the case. Even the most well-funded exhibition spaces pay artist fees that are barely in sync with the national minimum wage. The remuneration of artists is usually lower than the pay of installation technicians, graphic designers, project managers, curators or exhibition designers. In many cases, artists are funding the exhibitions from their own pocket, either through unpaid labour or finances channelled into production costs. There is no consensus that making art is work that should be recognised and remunerated as such.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Why are wages important?</strong></h2>



<p>The fair pay proposal suggests a three-tiered model, taking into account the budget limits of different exhibition spaces. The highest fee rate is linked to the minimum wage of cultural workers (currently 1,600 euros per month), which is a wage tariff applied to the permanent employees of some state funded institutions. The lowest fee rate is linked to the national minimum wage (725 euros per month or 4.30 per hour), a standard which also has limited reach. The minimum wage is legally binding for all conventional employment contracts; however, in the art sector incomes are usually lower because the law does not apply to temporary work contracts. There is no consensus in the art field about complying with the minimal standards voluntarily.</p>



<p>For freelance art workers, earning the minimum monthly wage is crucial because access to health insurance, unemployment protection and future retirement pension depends on it. The minimum wage has been rising every year, whereas incomes in the art sector remain stagnant. From the perspective of art workers, chasing the minimum wage is a sport that demands a truly athletic performance. Another problem is that not all income is paid in the form of wages – grants, licence fees and art sales are not subject to labour taxes and therefore do not grant access to the social security system. A recent study showed that 49% of freelance cultural workers in Estonia do not have stable access to health insurance<sup class="modern-footnotes-footnote " data-mfn="3" data-mfn-post-scope="000000007736385300000000408d891b_2169"><a href="javascript:void(0)"  role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-000000007736385300000000408d891b_2169-3">3</a></sup><span id="mfn-content-000000007736385300000000408d891b_2169-3" role="tooltip" class="modern-footnotes-footnote__note" tabindex="0" data-mfn="3">Koppel, K., Masso, M., Arrak, K., Michelson, A. 2021. <em>Vabakutselised loovisikud, nende majandusliku toimetuleku mudelid ja sotsiaalsete garantiide kättesaadavus</em>. Mõttekoda Praxis.</span>. To improve the situation, it is critical that artistic labour is remunerated fairly and through wages. Wages and social guarantees are two sides of the same coin.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Why is tracking time necessary?</strong></h2>



<p>Before developing our proposal, we researched fair pay standards in other countries and presented three examples for public discussion: the MU Agreement in Sweden, the recommendations developed by Carfac in Canada, and W.A.G.E. in New York<sup class="modern-footnotes-footnote " data-mfn="4" data-mfn-post-scope="000000007736385300000000408d891b_2169"><a href="javascript:void(0)"  role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-000000007736385300000000408d891b_2169-4">4</a></sup><span id="mfn-content-000000007736385300000000408d891b_2169-4" role="tooltip" class="modern-footnotes-footnote__note" tabindex="0" data-mfn="4">Triisberg, A., Mürk, M. Näitusetasu. Kolm näidet mujalt. Sirp (6 December 2019)</span>. The fee tariffs in these examples are linked to various parameters including the budget of the exhibition space, the number of visitors, the duration of the exhibition, or the number of participating artists. When analysing these models, we identified some essential shortcomings. For example, there is often a negative correlation between group exhibitions and artist fees – the larger the exhibition, the smaller the fee. Such a principle serves the interest of the institutions rather than the artists because the workload of one artist does not depend on whether the exhibition includes 10 or 20 artists. Models based on the number of visitors and the duration of the exhibition are framing the artwork as a commodity. In our proposal, we chose a different approach and focused on measuring working time.</p>



<p>Negotiating on the basis of workload is not a common practice in the art sector. The fees are usually dictated by institutions who approach freelance art workers once their budget is already fixed. These budgets do not realistically reflect the time needed to carry out the work.</p>



<p>In group conversations with art practitioners, we tried to estimate the average time needed to produce art works and exhibitions. For example, artists estimated that the preparation of a solo exhibition requires 6–9 months of full-time work, although the preparation period itself is usually longer because the intensity of work varies over time. The workload also depends on external factors such as the size of the exhibition space and the availability of institutional support staff. Based on the group conversations, we developed negotiation guidelines with negotiation guidelines that can be used to discuss the division of labour between the artist and the institution. This worksheet also highlights activities that are often overseen when agreements about workload are made, such as attending meetings and writing emails, participating in public programmes or giving interviews to the press. However, creative work cannot always be planned and measured precisely. Some concepts take time to mature, while others are born in the moment; some ideas are easy to realise, others require long experimentation with materials, techniques or skills. The negotiations about workload and fair pay should not only focus on administrative tasks that can be easily measured, but it is important to consider that the creative process also takes time.</p>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-two-images-block"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-3-copy-scaled.jpg" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-3-copy-150x150.jpg 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-3-copy-300x279.jpg 300w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-3-copy-1024x951.jpg 1024w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-3-copy-848x788.jpg 848w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-3-copy-1091x1013.jpg 1091w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-3-copy-1211x1125.jpg 1211w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-3-copy-1454x1350.jpg 1454w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-3-copy-1938x1800.jpg 1938w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-3-copy-2120x1969.jpg 2120w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-3-copy-scaled.jpg 2560w" data-sizes="auto" width="2560" height="2378" alt="" class="lazyload"/><figcaption1>Zody Burke, <em>Tallinn</em>, 2023</figcaption1><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-1-copy-scaled.jpg" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-1-copy-150x150.jpg 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-1-copy-300x279.jpg 300w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-1-copy-1024x951.jpg 1024w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-1-copy-848x788.jpg 848w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-1-copy-1091x1013.jpg 1091w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-1-copy-1211x1125.jpg 1211w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-1-copy-1454x1350.jpg 1454w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-1-copy-1938x1800.jpg 1938w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-1-copy-2120x1969.jpg 2120w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-1-copy-scaled.jpg 2560w" data-sizes="auto" width="2560" height="2378" alt="" class="lazyload"/><figcaption>Zody Burke, <em><em>Interpassivity</em></em>, 2023</figcaption><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Why is collective organising essential?</strong></h2>



<p>Not much has changed during the one and a half years since the fair pay proposal was published. Two institutions have partially modelled their fee tariffs according to the proposal. Tallinn Art Hall linked their artist fees with the minimum wage for cultural workers; however, the workload calculations are unrealistic – for the preparation of a large solo exhibition artists receive the payment of only three months – and thus the artist fees are actually closer to the national minimum wage which is roughly two times lower. The magazine <em>A Shade Colder</em> follows the proposed fee schedule for writers; however, the rates have not been adjusted to factor in the high inflation and the rise in the minimum wage tariffs in 2023. Some institutions have made adjustments that do not require financial means, such as improving legal awareness and adjusting communication protocols. It is commonly agreed that establishing new labour standards requires additional funding for art and culture. This aim can be achieved only through collective pressure.</p>



<p>In the past decade, the visual art sector in Estonia has gone through two different cycles of debate addressing un(der)paid labour. The first cycle took place in 2009–2011 as a collective organising process and coincided with an international wave of self-organised movements of art workers mobilised in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. The ongoing cycle (from 2019 onwards) has been led by individual experts, advocacy organisations and the ministry of culture. This shift in the forms of organising mirrors certain general patterns characteristic to labour struggles in Estonia. In the trade union movement, the preference is for a top-down service model in which the trade union offers counselling, support and services for members rather than empowering their active participation<sup class="modern-footnotes-footnote " data-mfn="5" data-mfn-post-scope="000000007736385300000000408d891b_2169"><a href="javascript:void(0)"  role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-000000007736385300000000408d891b_2169-5">5</a></sup><span id="mfn-content-000000007736385300000000408d891b_2169-5" role="tooltip" class="modern-footnotes-footnote__note" tabindex="0" data-mfn="5">Kall, K. Ametiühingute nõrkusest ja strateegilistest valikutest. <em>Vikerkaar</em> 2023/1-2.</span>.</p>



<p>According to a recent survey, only 4% of art workers are organised in trade unions, while 68% are members of creative associations which function as the most important advocacy organisations in the cultural sector<sup class="modern-footnotes-footnote " data-mfn="6" data-mfn-post-scope="000000007736385300000000408d891b_2169"><a href="javascript:void(0)"  role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-000000007736385300000000408d891b_2169-6">6</a></sup><span id="mfn-content-000000007736385300000000408d891b_2169-6" role="tooltip" class="modern-footnotes-footnote__note" tabindex="0" data-mfn="6">Koppel, K., Arrak, K., Konov, V., Parts, R. 2023. <em>Loometöö tasustamine Eestis ja loomepalkade mõju hindamine</em>. Civitta Eesti AS, 2023.</span>. In those cultural branches where workers are organised in trade unions – for example, theatre – working conditions are better. That is why it is essential that the issue of fair wages not be confined to elite spaces and limited to a negotiation between policy-making experts and representatives of advocacy organisations. The political pressure which is needed to improve working conditions in the art sector will be stronger when exercised collectively by a multitude of art workers – artists, curators, writers, designers, educators, archivists, builders, exhibition guards, cleaners, etc.</p>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-image-block"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-scaled.jpg" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-150x150.jpg 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-300x180.jpg 300w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-1024x614.jpg 1024w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-1313x788.jpg 1313w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-1689x1013.jpg 1689w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-1875x1125.jpg 1875w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-2250x1350.jpg 2250w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-3000x1800.jpg 3000w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-3282x1969.jpg 3282w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Untitled_Artwork-scaled.jpg 2560w" data-sizes="auto" width="2560" height="1536" alt="" class="lazyload"/><figcaption>Zody Burke, <em>Meetin</em>g, 2023</figcaption><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>


Wages for art work


<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-image-block alignleft"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/16-89630030-copy-scaled.jpg" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/16-89630030-copy-150x150.jpg 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/16-89630030-copy-300x199.jpg 300w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/16-89630030-copy-1024x679.jpg 1024w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/16-89630030-copy-1188x788.jpg 1188w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/16-89630030-copy-1528x1013.jpg 1528w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/16-89630030-copy-1696x1125.jpg 1696w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/16-89630030-copy-2036x1350.jpg 2036w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/16-89630030-copy-2714x1800.jpg 2714w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/16-89630030-copy-2969x1969.jpg 2969w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/16-89630030-copy-scaled.jpg 2560w" data-sizes="auto" width="2560" height="1698" alt="" class="lazyload"/><figcaption>Samira Elagoz &amp; Z Walsh, <em>You can’t get what you want but you can get me</em>, 2023</figcaption><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>



<p>Filmmaker and performance artist Samira Elagoz likes to join his spectators in front of the camera, capturing relationships in an intimacy deprived society. That often leaves the spectator to question the fictionality, performativity, and realness of the work but as Samira has written: “Romance is business and business is romance”<sup class="modern-footnotes-footnote " data-mfn="1" data-mfn-post-scope="000000007736385300000000408d891b_2193"><a href="javascript:void(0)"  role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-000000007736385300000000408d891b_2193-1">1</a></sup><span id="mfn-content-000000007736385300000000408d891b_2193-1" role="tooltip" class="modern-footnotes-footnote__note" tabindex="0" data-mfn="1">Elagoz, S. 2017. What I saw and how I lied. <em>Post-Dance</em>. Spångberg, M., Danjel Andersson, D., Edvartsen, M. (eds). Stockholm : MDT, 206</span>. His work <em>Cock, Cock… Who’s There?</em> – research on the spectrum of male–female relations, rape, online dating, and an attempt to regain one&#8217;s power – was followed by <em>Seek Bromance</em>, a pandemic-era journey of two lovers and a camera. His latest work with artist Z Walsh, the installation – <em>You Can’t Get What You Want But You Can Get Me</em> – opened in April as part of the <em>Nuoret 2023</em> exhibition in Helsinki.</p>



<p>Rumoured to be queer, provocative and emotionally intense, <em>Seek Bromance</em> was a must-see for me. The social media influenced dramaturgy and editing kept me on the edge of my seat for 240 minutes and I was fully immersed in Samira&#8217;s transition from high femme to transmasculine. <em>Seek Bromance</em> had initiated a personal process of constructing and deconstructing my perspectives on performing and practicing gender, first having to critically examine and then reinvent how I&#8217;ve perceived the “conventional” narrative of being trans.&nbsp;This interview is a sequel to questions I was left with after being introduced to Samira&#8217;s practice and a prequel to him coming to perform <em>Seek Bromance</em> at the festival SAAL Biennaal in Tallinn in August.&nbsp;</p>



<div class="q-and-a" class="wp-block-www-blocks-q-and-a-block"><div class="question"><p><strong>This is something I&#8217;ve been meaning to ask for a while – how do you prefer to be called?</strong></p></div><div class="answer"><p>My name is and always was Samira Elagoz. But people often call me Sam. During my three years of being out as trans, many have asked if I will change my name, but the truth is I don&#8217;t care so much for names. I believe they belong to gravestones. My relationship with “Samira” is complicated though. I hated it my whole youth as I was constantly bullied for being half Egyptian. While I could “pass as Finnish”, my name would always give me away. But later in life I became very proud of it. So, for me, “Samira” is not a marker of being a woman but of my background.</p></div></div>



<div class="q-and-a" class="wp-block-www-blocks-q-and-a-block"><div class="question"><p><strong>How do you carry the pressure and responsibility of having become the voice for many transmasculine people? Or the voice of sexual violence victims?</strong></p></div><div class="answer"><p>I believe one cannot, and should not, represent a “community”. To be expected to be a spokesperson for an entire demographic is unrealistic and unfair. If you are an artist from a minority or oppressed group, you are always being reviewed for what you represent, and whether your performance of representation is adequate. Any consideration of your merit as director, dramaturge, or editor, is entirely secondary, if that. The judgement is always personal, aimed at your appearance or behaviour, rather than how you make your work. White cis men, conversely, have been given this sense of neutrality, where they have the freedom to represent others, and tell stories they’ve merely observed. In addition, marginalised artists are held to a higher level of purity, and have the most to lose by not living up to imagined standards.</p></div></div>



<div class="q-and-a" class="wp-block-www-blocks-q-and-a-block"><div class="question"><p><strong>Could you define the transmasculine gaze in relation to the male/female gaze?</strong></p></div><div class="answer"><p>A defining moment in my career was in 2015, when I went to a retrospective exhibition of a famous male photographer. I remember thinking what a shame that this man met all these women throughout his life, and managed to portray them all in the same way. The thing about the male gaze is that at its core, it is boring – men projecting lascivious fantasies onto women. I decided then that when I have my retrospective one day, people will be able to see the life I experienced with my subjects/collaborators.</p><p>I’ve been filming strangers for ten years now, and I never had the intent of ascribing them to a specific role. My subjects could show themselves to me as they wanted to be seen. I gave them the freedom to use the camera, to turn it around on me. But to be frank, I’m not so invested in the gender of gaze anymore. A curious gaze should not be tied to the maker&#8217;s gender, but the way they choose to make work. In film, you could say it is in character development. How complex, unpredictable, or realistic you make your characters. Storytelling is universal, and the male perspective can no longer be considered the default one.</p></div></div>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-image-block"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/seek-7-2.png" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/seek-7-2-150x150.png 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/seek-7-2-300x158.png 300w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/seek-7-2-1024x540.png 1024w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/seek-7-2-1400x738.png 1400w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/seek-7-2-1800x949.png 1800w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/seek-7-2.png 2878w" data-sizes="auto" width="2878" height="1518" alt="" class="lazyload"/><figcaption>Samira Elagoz,<em> Seek Bromance</em>, 2021</figcaption><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>



<div class="q-and-a" class="wp-block-www-blocks-q-and-a-block"><div class="question"><p><strong>What is the power you hold as the initiator of a documentary artwork? Is it even power? Responsibility? A request to co-parent an unborn artwork?</strong></p></div><div class="answer"><p>I always knew I didn&#8217;t want to make traditional documentaries. I think it’s rather cowardly to be just behind the camera, to not put yourself on the line. My works are not a collection of portraits, but interactions between me and my subjects or collaborators. When I step into my camera’s frame, and offer the people I film a chance to use the camera, I try to create a dynamic in which the camera’s gaze is in constant dialogue. As for my collaborations, it’s important to me that the filming process is influenced by both of us. I&#8217;ve offered them the chance to be part of the editing, and it’s crucial that we get paid the same amount. That being said, anytime you represent someone else there is an inevitable power dynamic. I understand the vulnerability of being shown through someone else’s POV, and the courage it takes to be perceived. And even though I&#8217;ve thought a lot about these dynamics and created methods to offset and equalise them, they will be present.&nbsp;</p><p>My newest collaboration <em>You Can’t Get What You Want But You Can Get Me</em> with my partner Z Walsh was my first experience working with someone who was as keen to film me as I was him. I finally found someone with whom there wasn’t much of a power dynamic because we both shared the same need and curiosity to document our relationship since the moment we met.</p></div></div>



<div class="q-and-a" class="wp-block-www-blocks-q-and-a-block"><div class="question"><p><strong>How does the presence of a camera – the potential of a foreign gaze, an unknown number of strangers in the space with you – influence intimate situations?&nbsp;</strong></p></div><div class="answer"><p>The process of building a relationship, romantic or not, in front of a camera is a vulnerable and unpredictable experience for both parties. Meeting in the presence of a camera heightens a lot of the interactions. Romance is more romantic, excitement more exciting. Similarly, awkwardness can easily become tension.</p><p>Therapist Esther Perel, who publicly podcasts some of her sessions, says that couples therapy is the best theatre in town. In any situation where real intimacy is portrayed publicly, be it an artwork or reality TV, you open yourself up to be judged for the most private parts of your life. I personally believe there is something noble about placing your life, issues, insecurities and epiphanies on display, to trust your experience is human, and shared, and of value. We should admire people who dare to expose themselves like that.</p></div></div>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-image-block"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/IMG_4791.jpg" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/IMG_4791-150x150.jpg 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/IMG_4791-300x158.jpg 300w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/IMG_4791-1024x538.jpg 1024w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/IMG_4791-1400x735.jpg 1400w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/IMG_4791-1800x945.jpg 1800w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/IMG_4791-2000x1050.jpg 2000w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/IMG_4791.jpg 2076w" data-sizes="auto" width="2076" height="1090" alt="" class="lazyload"/><figcaption>Samira Elagoz,<em> Seek Bromance</em>, 2021</figcaption><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>



<div class="q-and-a" class="wp-block-www-blocks-q-and-a-block"><div class="question"><p><strong>Assuming there is the freedom to not have to entirely perform yourself – how much effort do you put into staying yourself in a situation where the camera is facing you?</strong></p></div><div class="answer"><p>I recently read a quote from Ingmar Bergman: “I could always live in my art but never in my life.” Autism runs in my family, and while I’ve never been formally diagnosed and have no intention of self-diagnosing, social interactions have always felt like a struggle to me. I’ve often felt like an alien who cannot socialise, and this has led me to <em>perform</em> socially in my real life, more than in my art. I&#8217;ve needed to mask and practise social choreography. Being in front of and behind the camera are some of the only places where I feel like I can be genuine, where I feel truly alive. And while people may not regard that as being my authentic self, to me, it is.</p><p>Working between documentary and performance I often face questions about authenticity. The main question remains: how performative is this documentary? An unanswerable question, because even if I would try to act like myself, the audience could never be sure to what extent that “self” is being <em>performed</em>, nor what my motives are.&nbsp;</p></div></div>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-two-images-block"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/facetune-scaled.jpg" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/facetune-150x150.jpg 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/facetune-300x200.jpg 300w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/facetune-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/facetune-1182x788.jpg 1182w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/facetune-1520x1013.jpg 1520w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/facetune-1688x1125.jpg 1688w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/facetune-2025x1350.jpg 2025w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/facetune-2700x1800.jpg 2700w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/facetune-2954x1969.jpg 2954w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/facetune-scaled.jpg 2560w" data-sizes="auto" width="2560" height="1707" alt="" class="lazyload"/><figcaption1>Samira Elagoz &amp; Z Walsh, <em>You can’t get what you want but you can get me</em>, 2023</figcaption1><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/IMG_5524-scaled.jpg" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/IMG_5524-150x150.jpg 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/IMG_5524-300x200.jpg 300w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/IMG_5524-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/IMG_5524-1182x788.jpg 1182w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/IMG_5524-1520x1013.jpg 1520w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/IMG_5524-1688x1125.jpg 1688w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/IMG_5524-2025x1350.jpg 2025w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/IMG_5524-2700x1800.jpg 2700w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/IMG_5524-2954x1969.jpg 2954w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/IMG_5524-scaled.jpg 2560w" data-sizes="auto" width="2560" height="1707" alt="" class="lazyload"/><figcaption>Samira Elagoz &amp; Z Walsh, <em>You can’t get what you want but you can get me</em>, 2023</figcaption><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>



<div class="q-and-a" class="wp-block-www-blocks-q-and-a-block"><div class="question"><p><strong>I do feel the art world is often afraid of being incorrect or too triggering. Subconsciously, I tend to expect artists dealing with <em>contemporary</em> topics to constantly question right and wrong, lead the way, and never suggest that being triggered and cared for may not be opposites. Why is it important for the viewer to be triggered?</strong></p></div><div class="answer"><p>I think the position of spectatorship is by default triggering. To be left only to witness, without being able to act in the moment. The passiveness of spectatorship can be quite paralysing regardless of the topic of the work. I recently read an interview with Nick Cave who said it’s the most problematic individuals that produce the best art. Although I cannot fully subscribe to that idea, I do think the greatest art can’t be made by moralists. I am convinced that the most powerful works arise from a place of nuanced understanding, and acceptance of complexity. Artists shouldn’t strive to be role models.</p></div></div>



<div class="q-and-a" class="wp-block-www-blocks-q-and-a-block"><div class="question"><p><strong>How do you direct the way the artwork triggers, and then “hold space” for the triggered?</strong></p></div><div class="answer"><p>I do put a lot of thought into how I construct dramaturgy, build tension and relieve it. I think the care happens there. However, I try to make my works without moralising, or giving readymade conclusions. I want the mic to turn towards the audience in the end. They should be left with a desire to articulate for themselves.</p></div></div>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-image-block"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Seek-Bromance.jpg" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Seek-Bromance-150x150.jpg 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Seek-Bromance-300x158.jpg 300w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Seek-Bromance-1024x540.jpg 1024w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Seek-Bromance-1400x738.jpg 1400w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Seek-Bromance-1800x949.jpg 1800w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Seek-Bromance-2000x1055.jpg 2000w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Seek-Bromance-2400x1265.jpg 2400w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Seek-Bromance.jpg 2492w" data-sizes="auto" width="2492" height="1314" alt="" class="lazyload"/><figcaption>Samira Elagoz,<em> Seek Bromance</em>, 2021</figcaption><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>


The position of spectatorship is by default triggering: An interview with Samira Elagoz

Blonde: Lemmi, Jean, Shirley and others

The spatial politics of disability in late Soviet Estonia

From home sweet home to an object of speculation: Interview with architects Aet Ader, Arvi Anderson and Mari Möldre


<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-image-block alignleft"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-pikk0-scaled.jpg" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-pikk0-150x150.jpg 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-pikk0-133x300.jpg 133w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-pikk0-455x1024.jpg 455w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-pikk0-350x788.jpg 350w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-pikk0-450x1013.jpg 450w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-pikk0-500x1125.jpg 500w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-pikk0-600x1350.jpg 600w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-pikk0-800x1800.jpg 800w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-pikk0-875x1969.jpg 875w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-pikk0-scaled.jpg 1138w" data-sizes="auto" width="1138" height="2560" alt="" class="lazyload"/><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>



<p>//flash— <br>grass uproots <br>in quick steps; <br>running in <br>new time </p>



<p>//zoom out— <br>clear the sky <br>&amp; screen: <br>all levels, <br>all at once </p>



<p>//zoom out, out, out–– <br>ready to play? </p>



<p>\\press start// </p>



<p>//zoom in–– <br>awoken in a forest, <br>the sun bathes you <br>––an image of wood <br>in a green dress–– <br>a shadow rests on time, <br>a dirty mirror, <br>raging bears; <br>a halo of orange <br>bourbon &amp; blurred faces <br>overlay in stills–– <br>floating </p>



<p>//zoom out–– <br>you must spell out: <br><em>warbles </em><br>with your tongue; <br>try again </p>



<p>//zoom in–– <br>sleep/grass: <br>a predusk wash. <br>the clouds here <br>are stone. </p>



<p>//zoom in— <br>get out— <br>the body is, <br><s>&lt;yourself&gt;</s> <br>an anti-harmony–– <br>body running; <br>you spit––glitch–– <br>wet: the dew rich grass; <br>step; lick–– <br>circumambulation <br>ringing </p>



<p>//flash–– <br>—you fall in. </p>



<p>//flash–– <br>eyes manifest, <br>hands––your mouth; <br><s>mouth— </s><br>your legs, <br>loud </p>



<p>//zoom out–– <br>level ten <br>level four <br>level up </p>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-image-block alignleft"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-scaled.jpg" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-150x150.jpg 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-126x300.jpg 126w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-431x1024.jpg 431w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-332x788.jpg 332w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-427x1013.jpg 427w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-474x1125.jpg 474w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-568x1350.jpg 568w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-758x1800.jpg 758w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-829x1969.jpg 829w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-scaled.jpg 1078w" data-sizes="auto" width="1078" height="2560" alt="" class="lazyload"/><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>



<p>//flash— <br>but you need no helmet, <br><s>you are different </s></p>



<p>\\flash— <br>compost, <br>skin; <br>the floor is concrete. <br>melodic runs. </p>



<p>//zoom in–– <br>find an exit–– <br>and the shaken <br>ppl; those ppl, <br>tired, tired of <br>the back to darkness–– </p>



<p>//flash— <br>out the portal, <br>off the platform, <br>a deep plunge, <br>a twist into words <br>down a hall, <br>like strawberries. </p>



<p>//zoom out— <br>you look up &amp; <br>you hear the <br>blurred faces &amp; <br>toenails stuttering on <br>the in-between breeze </p>



<p>//zoom out— <br>a stone bell end of <br>all your emotions, &amp;, <br>i am tired; <br>health, coin &amp; quest: <br>a sense of place; <br>refresh. </p>



<p>//flash— <br>you made your way, but <br>couldn&#8217;t walk. <br>dust covered the sun, <br>its pixels ripping <br>behind a leaf of cloud <br>swirling down spirals <br>in you/ <br>on you </p>



<p>//zoom in–– <br>&amp; pressed against <br>midnight <br>––bearing your <br>skin to the sky–– <br>if you stay in a place like this, <br>you might not be able to connect </p>



<p>//zoom in–– <br>how do you, <br>you rustle &amp; <br>stumble again </p>



<p>//zoom in–– <br>a body <br>still means borders </p>



<p>//zoom in–– <br>moist paint <br>spilling <br>dissonance </p>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-image-block alignleft"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-scaled.jpg" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-150x150.jpg 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-126x300.jpg 126w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-431x1024.jpg 431w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-332x788.jpg 332w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-427x1013.jpg 427w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-474x1125.jpg 474w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-568x1350.jpg 568w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-758x1800.jpg 758w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-829x1969.jpg 829w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-scaled.jpg 1078w" data-sizes="auto" width="1078" height="2560" alt="" class="lazyload"/><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>



<p>//zoom out— <br>crazy adventure: <br>chair, drink <br>&amp; dust. </p>



<p>//zoom in–– <br>the paper broke–– <br>but your shame was <br>like voice over <br>on branches breaching <br>from lips to steps </p>



<p>//flash <br>awake after pause, <br>action: <br>inspect: <br>chattering from <br>downstairs; <br>somehow spitting <br>in circles, around <br>a puddle that is <br>your eyes </p>



<p>//zoom in–– <br>your legs bend, <br>you stumble. <br>it&#8217;s not much further </p>



<p>//zoom in–– <br>&amp; fusing skin <br>falters. now, your <br>drawn smacks <br>seem bare— <br>&amp; you slur: <br>a cyber sense of <br>community </p>



<p>//zoom in–– <br>&amp; you’re dragging <br>a halo of orange <br>&amp; its shadow rests <br>in pixels; <br>running in circles, <br>neons leading you; <br><s>you couldn’t connect </s></p>



<p>//zoom out–– <br>it was definitely past <br>glitching, when <br>the wet paper, <br>sitting seafoam <br>&amp; your white shoes <br>frozen, disarrayed <br>&amp; mid-spill <br>as notes struck <br>a strong whiff <s>of <br>glorious, cheap, available</s> </p>



<p>//zoom out— <br>memory frozen. <br>after the sun’s death, <br>my tendons were cigarettes <br>&amp; the tobacco spilled out, <br>resteeping <br>on the dark bar. </p>



<p>//zoom in–– <br>a mad body, <br>a grin, <br>a leaf appears; <br>metamorphosis is in. </p>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-image-block alignleft"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-scaled.jpg" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-150x150.jpg 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-126x300.jpg 126w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-431x1024.jpg 431w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-332x788.jpg 332w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-427x1013.jpg 427w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-474x1125.jpg 474w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-568x1350.jpg 568w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-758x1800.jpg 758w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-829x1969.jpg 829w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/chain-scaled.jpg 1078w" data-sizes="auto" width="1078" height="2560" alt="" class="lazyload"/><figcaption>“sassy spiral” (2023)</figcaption><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>



<p>//zoom in–– <br>find out <br>how you came to this <br>green–– <br>it fills the foreground <br>over the long stone; <br>the shield is <br>waiting. <br>are you <br>at once sound &amp; <br>a peninsula, <br>with words sprouting: <br>‘save them’ </p>



<p>//zoom-in–– <br>you have <br>a multi-headed, <br>blurred, slumped body, <br>fissure <br>between times </p>



<p>//flash— <br>reward? <br><s>yes please </s></p>



<p>//zoom in–– <br>like pine, <br>the linoleum <br>tingling awake–– <br>fruit fwd phlegm, <br>frozen &amp; vibrating </p>



<p>//zoom-in–– <br>more health <br>more hearts <br>more time </p>



<p>//zoom-in–– <br>red tipped lavender <br>&amp; a swarm of green— <br>last night <br>ripples in. </p>



<p>//flash— <br>there was all this <br>unshifting <br>wind again <br>in loops–– </p>



<p>//zoom in–– <br>examine your surroundings, <br>stones soak, <br>so many spirals <br>swimming in wails. </p>



<p>//zoom out–– <br>mouth—/ <br>&amp; green–– <br>ripples out. </p>



<p>//zoom in–– <br>you’re dragging <br>the glitch rich grass. </p>



<p>\\back to start.&nbsp;</p>


start—screen—spiral


<div class="event-info" class="wp-block-www-blocks-event-info-block"><div><h3 class="title">Vilnius Biennial brings performances to the city</h3><div class="location01"><p>23 July – 6 August 2023, Vilnius, Lithuania</p><p><a href="https://www.instagram.com/vilniusbiennial/">@vilniusbiennial</a></p></div><div class="description01"><p>The first edition of the Vilnius Biennial of Performance Art will invite the residents of and visitors to Vilnius to witness performances by both established and emerging artists from Lithuania and abroad. The main focus of this Biennial is the city as a human-made and human-dominated environment that we share with other life forms, where different histories, myths, activities, interests, desires and visions collide, coexist and overlap.</p></div></div><div><h3 class="title">Kaunas Biennale and Survival Kit unite in friendship</h3><div class="location02"><p>Kaunas Biennale, 25 August – 29 October <a href="https://www.instagram.com/kaunasbiennial/?hl=en">@kaunasbiennial</a></p><p>Survival Kit, 7 September – 8 October <a href="https://www.instagram.com/survivalkit.lv/?hl=en">@survivalkit</a></p></div><div class="description02"><p>The 14th Kaunas Biennale (Kaunas, Lithuania) and Contemporary Art Festival Survival Kit 14 (Riga, Latvia) announce Alicia Knock and Inga Lāce as the co-curators of Long-distance Friendships – a programme of events driven by shared research, friendship, and exchange of ideas activating decolonial perspectives and aesthetics across sites in each country. As the seemingly forgotten, yet so present, the traumatic past of the region is looming back in the daily lives of Eastern European societies with the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, the curators&nbsp; ask: in a time of geopolitical fragmentation, can international alliances be forged and nurtured based on friendship and solidarity rather than power and market dynamics?</p></div></div></div>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-two-images-block"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/VB23-opening-event-curated-programme_-Emilija-Skarnulyte-performance.-Photo-by-Andrej-Vasilenko.-Photo-by-Marius-Zicius-copy-scaled.jpg" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/VB23-opening-event-curated-programme_-Emilija-Skarnulyte-performance.-Photo-by-Andrej-Vasilenko.-Photo-by-Marius-Zicius-copy-150x150.jpg 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/VB23-opening-event-curated-programme_-Emilija-Skarnulyte-performance.-Photo-by-Andrej-Vasilenko.-Photo-by-Marius-Zicius-copy-300x200.jpg 300w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/VB23-opening-event-curated-programme_-Emilija-Skarnulyte-performance.-Photo-by-Andrej-Vasilenko.-Photo-by-Marius-Zicius-copy-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/VB23-opening-event-curated-programme_-Emilija-Skarnulyte-performance.-Photo-by-Andrej-Vasilenko.-Photo-by-Marius-Zicius-copy-1182x788.jpg 1182w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/VB23-opening-event-curated-programme_-Emilija-Skarnulyte-performance.-Photo-by-Andrej-Vasilenko.-Photo-by-Marius-Zicius-copy-1520x1013.jpg 1520w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/VB23-opening-event-curated-programme_-Emilija-Skarnulyte-performance.-Photo-by-Andrej-Vasilenko.-Photo-by-Marius-Zicius-copy-1688x1125.jpg 1688w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/VB23-opening-event-curated-programme_-Emilija-Skarnulyte-performance.-Photo-by-Andrej-Vasilenko.-Photo-by-Marius-Zicius-copy-2025x1350.jpg 2025w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/VB23-opening-event-curated-programme_-Emilija-Skarnulyte-performance.-Photo-by-Andrej-Vasilenko.-Photo-by-Marius-Zicius-copy-2700x1800.jpg 2700w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/VB23-opening-event-curated-programme_-Emilija-Skarnulyte-performance.-Photo-by-Andrej-Vasilenko.-Photo-by-Marius-Zicius-copy-2954x1969.jpg 2954w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/VB23-opening-event-curated-programme_-Emilija-Skarnulyte-performance.-Photo-by-Andrej-Vasilenko.-Photo-by-Marius-Zicius-copy-scaled.jpg 2560w" data-sizes="auto" width="2560" height="1707" alt="" class="lazyload"/><figcaption1>Vilnius Biennial of Performance Art. Opening event (curated programme) Emilija Škarnulytė performance. Photo by Marius Zicius</figcaption1><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Installation-view-of-the-work-by-Tabita-Rezaire-at-the-Contemporary-Art-Festival-Survival-Kit-13-The-Little-Bird-must-be-Caught-curated-by-iLiana-Fokianaki-in-Riga-September-2022.-Photo-copy-scaled.jpg" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Installation-view-of-the-work-by-Tabita-Rezaire-at-the-Contemporary-Art-Festival-Survival-Kit-13-The-Little-Bird-must-be-Caught-curated-by-iLiana-Fokianaki-in-Riga-September-2022.-Photo-copy-150x150.jpg 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Installation-view-of-the-work-by-Tabita-Rezaire-at-the-Contemporary-Art-Festival-Survival-Kit-13-The-Little-Bird-must-be-Caught-curated-by-iLiana-Fokianaki-in-Riga-September-2022.-Photo-copy-212x300.jpg 212w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Installation-view-of-the-work-by-Tabita-Rezaire-at-the-Contemporary-Art-Festival-Survival-Kit-13-The-Little-Bird-must-be-Caught-curated-by-iLiana-Fokianaki-in-Riga-September-2022.-Photo-copy-722x1024.jpg 722w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Installation-view-of-the-work-by-Tabita-Rezaire-at-the-Contemporary-Art-Festival-Survival-Kit-13-The-Little-Bird-must-be-Caught-curated-by-iLiana-Fokianaki-in-Riga-September-2022.-Photo-copy-556x788.jpg 556w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Installation-view-of-the-work-by-Tabita-Rezaire-at-the-Contemporary-Art-Festival-Survival-Kit-13-The-Little-Bird-must-be-Caught-curated-by-iLiana-Fokianaki-in-Riga-September-2022.-Photo-copy-714x1013.jpg 714w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Installation-view-of-the-work-by-Tabita-Rezaire-at-the-Contemporary-Art-Festival-Survival-Kit-13-The-Little-Bird-must-be-Caught-curated-by-iLiana-Fokianaki-in-Riga-September-2022.-Photo-copy-793x1125.jpg 793w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Installation-view-of-the-work-by-Tabita-Rezaire-at-the-Contemporary-Art-Festival-Survival-Kit-13-The-Little-Bird-must-be-Caught-curated-by-iLiana-Fokianaki-in-Riga-September-2022.-Photo-copy-952x1350.jpg 952w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Installation-view-of-the-work-by-Tabita-Rezaire-at-the-Contemporary-Art-Festival-Survival-Kit-13-The-Little-Bird-must-be-Caught-curated-by-iLiana-Fokianaki-in-Riga-September-2022.-Photo-copy-1269x1800.jpg 1269w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Installation-view-of-the-work-by-Tabita-Rezaire-at-the-Contemporary-Art-Festival-Survival-Kit-13-The-Little-Bird-must-be-Caught-curated-by-iLiana-Fokianaki-in-Riga-September-2022.-Photo-copy-1388x1969.jpg 1388w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Installation-view-of-the-work-by-Tabita-Rezaire-at-the-Contemporary-Art-Festival-Survival-Kit-13-The-Little-Bird-must-be-Caught-curated-by-iLiana-Fokianaki-in-Riga-September-2022.-Photo-copy-scaled.jpg 1805w" data-sizes="auto" width="1805" height="2560" alt="" class="lazyload"/><figcaption>Installation view of the work by Tabita Rezaire at the Contemporary Art Festival Survival Kit 13 “<em>The Little Bird must be Caught</em>” curated by iLiana Fokianaki, in Riga, September 2022. Photo by Ēriks Božis, Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art</figcaption><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>



<div class="event-info" class="wp-block-www-blocks-event-info-block"><div><h3 class="title">Tallinn performance art festival SAAL Biennaal celebrates its 20th edition</h3><div class="location01"><p>21 – 31 August, Tallinn, Estonia</p><p><a href="https://www.instagram.com/kanutigildisaal_/">@kanutigildisaal_</a></p></div><div class="description01"><p>SAAL Biennaal is a performance art biennale in Tallinn at Kanuti Gildi SAAL theatre. This edition has been collectively curated by the people of SAAL and the opening performance will be <em>DOOM</em> – a collaboration between Teresa Vittucci and Colin Self. Many of the works in the programme address the “invisible other” – something or someone who has been left out, and the borders between “here” and “there”, “me” and “them”.</p></div></div><div><h3 class="title">Cesis art festival opens in mid-July</h3><div class="location02"><p>15 July – 20 August, Cesis, Latvia</p><p><a href="https://www.instagram.com/makslasfestivalscesis/">@makslasfestivalscesis</a></p></div><div class="description02"><p>Cesis Art Festival opens with exhibitions and concerts on the 15 July in the North-Latvian town of Cesis. The main exhibition is a group show <em>Artifacts of the Present</em>, curated by Žanete Skarule, where artists Ola Vasiljeva, Kristaps Ancans, Augustas Serapinas and Lina Lapelyte create a dialogue with space, its history, and imagined future. The festival programme also includes solo shows by Martins Vizbulis and Raimonds Staprāns.&nbsp;</p></div></div></div>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-two-images-block"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Oss-by-Marlene-Monteiro-Freitas.-Photo_-Laurent-Philipe-copy-scaled.jpg" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Oss-by-Marlene-Monteiro-Freitas.-Photo_-Laurent-Philipe-copy-150x150.jpg 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Oss-by-Marlene-Monteiro-Freitas.-Photo_-Laurent-Philipe-copy-300x200.jpg 300w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Oss-by-Marlene-Monteiro-Freitas.-Photo_-Laurent-Philipe-copy-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Oss-by-Marlene-Monteiro-Freitas.-Photo_-Laurent-Philipe-copy-1182x788.jpg 1182w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Oss-by-Marlene-Monteiro-Freitas.-Photo_-Laurent-Philipe-copy-1520x1013.jpg 1520w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Oss-by-Marlene-Monteiro-Freitas.-Photo_-Laurent-Philipe-copy-1688x1125.jpg 1688w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Oss-by-Marlene-Monteiro-Freitas.-Photo_-Laurent-Philipe-copy-2025x1350.jpg 2025w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Oss-by-Marlene-Monteiro-Freitas.-Photo_-Laurent-Philipe-copy-2700x1800.jpg 2700w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Oss-by-Marlene-Monteiro-Freitas.-Photo_-Laurent-Philipe-copy-2954x1969.jpg 2954w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Oss-by-Marlene-Monteiro-Freitas.-Photo_-Laurent-Philipe-copy-scaled.jpg 2560w" data-sizes="auto" width="2560" height="1707" alt="" class="lazyload"/><figcaption1><em>Ôss</em> by Marlene Monteiro Freitas. Photo by Laurent Philipe</figcaption1><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/MABOCA-festival-in-Madona.-Photo_-MABOCA-copy-scaled.jpg" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/MABOCA-festival-in-Madona.-Photo_-MABOCA-copy-150x150.jpg 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/MABOCA-festival-in-Madona.-Photo_-MABOCA-copy-300x200.jpg 300w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/MABOCA-festival-in-Madona.-Photo_-MABOCA-copy-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/MABOCA-festival-in-Madona.-Photo_-MABOCA-copy-1182x788.jpg 1182w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/MABOCA-festival-in-Madona.-Photo_-MABOCA-copy-1520x1013.jpg 1520w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/MABOCA-festival-in-Madona.-Photo_-MABOCA-copy-1688x1125.jpg 1688w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/MABOCA-festival-in-Madona.-Photo_-MABOCA-copy-2025x1350.jpg 2025w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/MABOCA-festival-in-Madona.-Photo_-MABOCA-copy-2700x1800.jpg 2700w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/MABOCA-festival-in-Madona.-Photo_-MABOCA-copy-2954x1969.jpg 2954w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/MABOCA-festival-in-Madona.-Photo_-MABOCA-copy-scaled.jpg 2560w" data-sizes="auto" width="2560" height="1707" alt="" class="lazyload"/><figcaption>MABOCA festival in Madona. Photo by MABOCA</figcaption><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>



<div class="event-info" class="wp-block-www-blocks-event-info-block"><div><h3 class="title">MABOCA draws the viewers into a game of irony</h3><div class="location01"><p>20 May – 15 July, Madona, Latvia</p><p><a href="https://www.instagram.com/mabocafestival/?hl=en">@mabocafestival</a></p></div><div class="description01"><p>For the third year running, MABOCA, or Madona Bunch of Cool Art is an art festival in the town of Maboca in Latvia. The festival brings together local and international artists and draws viewers into a game of irony, starting with the name of the biennale, which is a reference to the Riga International Biennial RIBOCA. The festival will take place in Madona&#8217;s railway station, bus station, cinema &#8220;Vidzeme,&#8221; and several outdoor locations.&nbsp;</p></div></div><div><h3 class="title">Urban Festival UIT in Tartu focuses on wastelands</h3><div class="location02"><p>16 – 19 August, Tartu, Estonia</p><p><a href="https://www.instagram.com/uitfestival/">@uitfestival</a></p></div><div class="description02"><p>Urban Festival UIT (derived from the Estonian word “uitama” – to wander) is a site-specific art festival which aims to discover the urban space of its host town Tartu from new and exciting angles. The festival cooperates with local and foreign artists working in interdisciplinary mediums. The ephemeral charm of UIT is embodied in the way the festival gives new life to long forgotten and abandoned places in Tartu – deserted buildings and overgrown gardens which have not stood the test of time. The temporary revival of those sites allows Tartu to expand in abstract dimensions and encourages the audience to dream. The central theme of this year, <em>Urban Pause,</em> focuses on the wastelands and voids of Tartu.</p></div></div></div>



<div class="event-info" class="wp-block-www-blocks-event-info-block"><div><h3 class="title">Summer Exhibition of Estonian Young Contemporary Art Union</h3><div class="location01"><p>3 – 24 August, Tallinn, Estonia</p><p>@enkkl_nadalapreemia</p></div><div class="description01"><p>The first annual show of the Estonian Young Contemporary Art Union will happen at Tallinn Art Hall gallery in August. The Union has so far been giving weekly awards for young artists on Instagram. It is a non-institutional community of young artists aiming to acknowledge, introduce and unite young artists just starting their careers. There will be events on the opening and final day of the show, tours, a public programme and a visitor’s award for the best artist. The title and concept of the show is a reference to the traditional <em>Spring Exhibition</em> at Tallinn Art Hall, organized yearly by the Estonian Artists Association.</p></div></div><div><div class="location02"></div><div class="description02"></div></div></div>



<div class="wp-block-www-blocks-image-block"><figure class="is-zoomable"><img data-src="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/ENKKL-kunstnikekollaaz-copy.jpg" data-srcset="https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/ENKKL-kunstnikekollaaz-copy-150x150.jpg 150w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/ENKKL-kunstnikekollaaz-copy-300x169.jpg 300w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/ENKKL-kunstnikekollaaz-copy-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/ENKKL-kunstnikekollaaz-copy-1400x788.jpg 1400w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/ENKKL-kunstnikekollaaz-copy-1800x1013.jpg 1800w, https://admin.ashadecolder.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/ENKKL-kunstnikekollaaz-copy.jpg 1920w" data-sizes="auto" width="1920" height="1080" alt="" class="lazyload"/><figcaption>Estonian Young Contemporary Art Union. Collage. 2023.</figcaption><button class="zoom m-image" aria-label="View fullscreen"></button></figure></div>


The Eyes of My Other

Editorial. The Eyes of My Other

By Kaarin Kivirähk & Keiu Krikmann

The Eyes of My Other

The Undinous Court

By Shola von Reinhold

From Life. On the work of Anu Põder

By Jan Verwoert

Decolonise that – Estonian identity as indigenous and/or white

By Linda Kaljundi

The Terrifying and Mundane Seduction of Orchids

By Keiu Krikmann

Sickly-Sweet Monsters at the Ethnography Museum

By Andreas Kalkun

Market Values

By Brit Pavelson

From Family Photo Albums to the White Cube – Interview with Diana Tamane

By Piret Karro & Hanna Samoson

Searching for a label: The New East

By Kaarin Kivirähk

Your guide to Estonia and beyond 2022