2020 programme

Tallinn Art Hall is pleased to announce its 2020 programme, including exhibitions at adjoining spaces, Art Hall Gallery and Tallinn City Gallery.

Tallinn Art Hall

Mihkel Ilus and Paul Kuimet. Endless Story
March 7–May 3, 2020
Curated by Siim Preiman

Endless Story brings together new work by Mihkel Ilus and Paul Kuimet. Based on their methods, materials and creative ideas, their practices may not appear to have much in common. However, their work is united by a dedication and creative intensity that is most clearly expressed in a shared fanaticism for their chosen media and techniques. 

Mihkel Ilus is a visual artist who uses the tools of a painter, and in recent years has focused his work primarily on dissecting and questioning the art of painting itself. In Kuimet’s work—which continues to make use of traditional photography in the form of slides, film and analog enlargements—architecture plays an important role both as the object of documentation, and the architectonic elements he uses in the exhibition space.

Ilus and Kuimet look at the invisible systems that drive our world, the former addressing local systems, the latter global, which despite the passing of time, remain or are born once again in an almost identical form.

Estonian Artists Association Spring Exhibition
May 22–June 21, 2020

The annual exhibition held across Tallinn Art Hall, the Art Hall Gallery and Tallinn City Gallery will express both a curatorial vision and an interpretation of the current Estonian art scene. Presented in an art fair format, it comprises individual presentations of artists’ work that is available to buy. There is also a People’s Choice Award granted to an artist each year that is voted for by the public.

Olev Subbi: Landscapes from the End of Times
July 4–September 6, 2020
Olev Subbi, Larry Achiampong, María Dalberg, Nona Inescu, Ad Minoliti, Juana Subercaseaux, Nazim Ünal Yilmaz and Maya Watanabe.
Curated by Àngels Miralda

Ninety years after Olev Subbi’s birth, Tallinn Art Hall re-examines his practice in the context of some of the most tumultuous moments of Estonian Art History. The exhibition offers a new perspective on his practice alongside the work of contemporary international artists that expand upon his interests in the connection between ecology and the social through meditations on our relationship with nature.

Subbi’s view of history is non-linear—his paintings are windows into parallel worlds that are neither present, past nor future. The invitation to contemporary artists was made by linking particular themes present in Subbi’s work with ongoing social problems. The exhibition positions itself by encouraging continuous revisionism and establishing global non-linear links in a chain. Although Subbi lived in the most difficult of contexts in the bleakness of post-war Estonia, his lesson to us is to survive by finding beauty in everything.

May You Be Loved and Protected (working title)
September 19–November 22, 2020
Curator Tamara Luuk

An exhibition about art, art as the friend, and as the agent of your condition; an inseparable companion in the world. About artists through whose work this becomes possible, artists who believe and know that there are things that can be learned and healed better through art than through life.

The four rooms of the Tallinn Art Hall will be used to show the work of local and Central European artists. The three Estonian artists whose work will be on display, Dénes Farkas, Tõnis Saadoja and Jevgeni Zolotko, symbolically represent a cross-section of the Estonian art scene that combines life and art experience of equal existential strength.

*Flo Kasearu. Fallout (working title)
December 5, 2020–February 14, 2021
Curated by Cathrin Mayer

The work of Flo Kasearu cannot be described through a preference for a certain style or medium, but rather a playful, provocative and conceptual approach to art-making. She not only examines the societal conditions of our times but also reflects upon the mechanisms that create meaning and value inside and outside the field of art.

Born in the mid-1980s, Kasearu belongs to the young generation of Estonian artists that witnessed the shift of powers in the aftermath of a bipolar world order. In confronting those upheavals in Estonia, the artist has particularity been interested in the effects and changes in the private and public sphere of her home country. In recent years, she has drawn our attention to the role of women in society in particular. Fall Out, the first major solo show by the artist represents a deeper engagement in the topic of domestic violence and investigates its various aspects, as well as the journey women undertake when freeing themselves from oppression and claiming their independence.

Art Hall Gallery

*Laura Kuusk. Dear Algorithm,
Open until March 29, 2020
Curated by Niekolaas Johannes Lekkerkerk

Sirja-Liisa Eelma and Mari Kurismaa. Repeating Patterns
April 3–May 17, 2020
Curator Tamara Luuk

Alina Bliumis and Tanja Muravskaja. Narrating Against the Grain
July 3-September 6, 2020
Curated by Corina L. Apostol

*Maria Kapajeva
September 11–November 8, 2020
Curated by Siim Preiman

Benjamin Badock and Kaido Ole. A Sparrow in the Hand
November 13, 2020–January 10, 2021
Curated by Siim Preiman

Tallinn City Gallery

*Ede Raadik. The Best You Can Ever Be
Open until March 29, 2020
Curated by Corina L. Apostol

*Maria Valdma. Jardin (working title)
April 3–May 17, 2020
Curator Siim Preiman

Urmas Pedanik. Through the Glass
July 9–August 23, 2020
Curator Tamara Luuk

Like Stones in Flowing Water
Ingrid Allik, Naima Neidre and Tiiu Pallo-Vaik
Agusut 28–October 25, 2020
Curator Tamara Luuk

Yevgeniy Fiks. Progressive Revisionism
October 30, 2020–January 3, 2021
Curated by Corina L. Apostol

*These marked exhibitions are part of Tallinn Art Hall’s 2020 thematic focus on feminism in the 21st century, highlighting critical issues confronting women today.  Artists will stage solo exhibitions dealing with complicated narratives that go beyond what is regarded as “women’s issues” such as the politics of care and the body, the impact of technology on everyday life, violence and trauma, labour and poverty, as well as fertility and decay.

International projects

Modern Love
October 3, 2020–March 7, 2021
Freiburg Museum of Contemporary Art
Curator Katerina Gregos

The exhibition Modern Love looks at love and human relations in the current age of the internet, social media and high capitalism, and the first age of “cold intimacy.” The exhibition looks at how the digital world, technology giants and neoliberalism have change love and social relations, while at the same time diluting the obstacles between the public and the private. The exhibition also looks at how issues of time and space have influenced the way we communicate between ourselves and how the virtual has become entwined with reality, and how even though they are two quite distinct things, the opposite is suggested.

Modern Love deals with human pathologies connected to the commodification of feelings and the negative expressions of love (e.g. love of money), and for comparison, it also delves into meaningful and transformative forms of love, from the personal to the political. How can we restore the place of love as a powerful emotional force and intense psychological bonds, which give meaning to our lives like no other mutually influencing “object” or experience can? How can we save love from the grasp of capital and corporate technology? How can we fight against instrumentalisation, superficiality, and vulgarity in commerce and social media?

International press enquiries: Alexia Menikou