Your guide to Estonia and beyond in 2025

The exhibition, curated by Kari Conte, explores the dynamics of public and private space through the lens of the NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) phenomenon. BANANA invites visitors to engage in discussions about urban and rural development, public participation, local values, and property rights. The exhibition will also travel to Färgfabriken in Stockholm where it will be on show in Autumn 2025.

The Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson presents his first solo exhibition in Estonia, featuring six large works from 2004–2025. A Boy and a Girl and a Bush and a Bird offers insights into the works of one of today’s most intriguing artists, who draws inspiration from pop music, recent and classical art history and, in a less straightforward way, from political upheavals. The show is curated by Anders Härm.

In its 19th edition, Tallinn Print Triennial’s main exhibition titled   will focus on exploring the medium of graphic art through the lens of media archaeology. As one of Estonia’s longest-running art events initiated in 1968 to showcase prints from across the Baltic states,  it now offers a platform to discuss the role of printmaking in the context of shrinking limits of attention and its effect on biological memory. Originating from a personal observation, it seeks to explore different methods of safe-keeping memory, as if the digital was made to forget and the analogue made to remember. This international art festival will culminate on 29 August 2025 at Lindakivi Cultural Centre with a closing event featuring experimental time-based works in sound, spoken word, and video art. The triennial is curated by Marika Agu.

Marika Agu, curator:
“The Tallinn Print Triennial offers a platform to discuss the role of printmaking in the current state of eroding limits of attention and its effect on biological memory. Is it possible to reverse this situation? How can we cope with a shortage of memory space in our brains? This is a challenge of our time. Perhaps an answer to this might be as artist Algirdas Jakas has suggested – by taking a closer look at the circuit boards that surround us, we might better understand their functioning and to resist their allure.”

Tallinn Photomonth is an international biennial of contemporary art that takes a broader look at developments in art and society intensively mediated by cameras, screens and images. The programme of the 8th Tallinn Photomonth includes main exhibitions at Kai Art Centre, Tallinn city space, and Hobusepea and FOKU galleries. In addition, the biennial's satellite programme includes a number of exhibitions and events at various venues in Tallinn, as well as in Tartu and Võru.

Terje Ojaver, a classic of contemporary Estonian sculpture, displays her very latest work and a selection of earlier creations. Her sculptures speak of life as a challenge that must be faced. A giant woman armed with a pitchfork is ready to defend her home and children, yet she is fully aware of the dual purpose of her weapon. She knows that a corpse is essentially fertilizer, worm food: the beginning of new life.

Sigrid Viir continues her research on the fluid borders of work and vacation in today’s society. The use of words like worcation, bleisure, bizaction show that our understanding of the line between work and vacation is becoming ever more blurred. Sigrid Viir is a photo and installation artist. Her work often addresses unspoken rules and morals, while also questioning the nature and limitations of the medium of photography.

Eike Eplik is a sculptor and installation artist who is deeply fascinated by biodiversity and its complicated relationship with humankind. Becoming a mother and observing her child's way of perceiving the world around him has caused her to rediscover and nurture her inner child. She plans to create a space that resembles a playful garden filled with earthy clay and colorful metal sculptures, plants, sand, and even water, an inviting place where people can reconnect with themselves. The show is curated by Šelda Pukite.

Eike Eplik, artist:
“During the times when everything else seems more urgent, playing is often forgotten. Play may seem childish and unnecessary but I think it is important as it is a liberating act that brings new undertones to life and helps us cope better in everyday situations. At the exhibition, people can participate in a game I am playing while creating my works – they can hug a sculpture and play with little stones, water the flowers or just be there and think about playing as such. Life does not only consist of achievements, being alive is wonderful and we should enjoy life in its authenticity and feel joy.”

The international group exhibition, curated by Margit Säde, draws inspiration from the environments and umwelts of diverse living organisms. The exhibition looks beyond the distinctions between species and acknowledges the present moment from a more diverse perspective than that of the human eye. The exhibition includes artists from Estonia, the Netherlands, North Macedonia and beyond: Maud van den Beuken, Uku Sepsivart, Zorica Zafirovska, Angela Maasalu, Helena Keskküla, Nele Kurvits, Vaim Sarv, Yvette Bathgate and Jake Shepherd.

The exhibition presents an overview of the works of Anna-Stina Treumund (1982–2017), who was the first in Estonia to openly identify as a lesbian artist. In the exhibition, Treumund’s works are in dialogue with works by artists who have influenced her (Marju Mutsu and Kai Kaljo), as well as with young artists who are continuing the queer feminist exploration in contemporary art (Janina Sabaliauskaitė from Lithuania, and Elo Vahtrik and Maria Izabella Lehtsaar from Estonia).

The solo show by Ron Verlin That which I was in life, I am in death starts from Dante’s Divine Comedy. The exhibition centres around clothing as symbolic objects with reference to decadence, decay and transformation. These are states of mind which precede salvation or rebirth. Verlin is a fashion designer whose works unite mythology, faith and personal research into a poetic visual narrative. The exhibition is curated by Sten Ojavee.

EDEN: Coming of Age will gather a group of internationally acknowledged inter-generational artists as well as the most visible creatives from the Baltics. The festival marks the 16th (sweet sixteen) anniversary of Kim?, the arts organisation which has played a pivotal role in supporting local and international contemporary art in Riga. Kim? has worked with both emerging and renowned artists, theoreticians, curators, philosophers, translators and thinkers, aiming to provide a responsive context to their work and make critical practices accessible to a wider audience. The festival has been co-curated by Alaina Claire Feldman and Zane Onckule. The event takes place at Hanzas Street 22, the site of Kim?’s new larger venue.

The curators of this year’s edition, Blanca de la Torre and Kati Kivinen, drew inspiration from the protected Vallisaari Island, which has been preserved from human habitation for decades. The biennial explores the significance of shelter and turns our gaze toward non-human nature. In the works, the focus shifts from the human world to animals, water, plants, insects, minerals, and other living agents and their role as contributors to our planet’s well-being.

The Sapieha Palace in Vilnius presents a solo show by Edith Karlson, an Estonian artist based in Tallinn. Her typically large-scale, immersive sculptural installations feature animals, people and creatures that defy definition. The artist’s works speak of the states that plague contemporary men, the absurdity of a world that has lost its mystery, and the innermost impulses of the senses and imagination. She represented Estonia at the 60th Venice biennial (2024). The exhibition is curated by Maria Arusoo.

Taking Simurgh – the mythical bird found across Eurasia – as a departure point, the annual international contemporary art festival in Riga will address the critical state of transnationalism and liberation in a world where identity is often seen as singular and reductive. This edition is curated by the internationally renowned artist collective Slavs and Tatars and curator Michał Grzegorzek.

Slavs and Tatars, curators:
“Since the fall of the USSR and especially since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, we’ve witnessed a long-overdue correction. After a century or more of resource extraction, language suppression, and other ills of colonialism, there’s been an important drive towards articulating national identity and agency away from the top-down, imperial influence of Moscow. 
Variations of the simurgh bird can be found from Chernihiv in central Ukraine to the Xinjiang region of western China where Uighurs reside. In that sense, it also allows us a different understanding of regionalism, away from the brutal hand of geopolitics: how come from Chernihiv westwards, already in Poland and across Europe to the United States, for example, does the macho eagle appear and the flamboyant simurgh disappear?”

Life After Life will explore themes of uncertainty and transition, experimenting with the biennial as a malleable format – one capable of suspending and reorganising the established dynamics of contemporary art’s social and aesthetic fluency. The biennial is curated by Adomas Narkevičius.