Installation view: Dance As a Weapon (2020 “Studies in Movement Across National Ideologies of War and Resistance” series of 70 works, watercolor on paper, dimensions variable) at What Makes Another World Possible? curated by Corina L. Apostol, Kunstihoone Tallinn, Estonia, photo #1-2 by Paul Kulmet
On Friday, 17 September, an exhibition entitled What Makes Another World Possible? will open at Tallinn Art Hall, which looks at socially engaged art in the last decade and the role of art in social and political struggles. The exhibited works provide an overview of how art has been used as a tool for shaping society in the last decade.
Corina L. Apostol, the curator of the exhibition, remarks that when compiling the exhibition she was guided by the belief that artists contribute to some of the most crucial debates of our times and that their voices are significant in shaping society and imagining how it could be different. “The work of the artists in this exhibition brings together the various facets of art, activism and global politics,” she says.
The exhibition includes works by 14 artists or groups from Estonia and abroad: Alina Bliumis, Zach Blas, Chto Delat?, Vala T. Foltyn, Núria Güell, Sandra Kosorotova, Kristina Norman, Daniela Ortiz, Tanja Ostojić, Lia Perjovschi, Dan Perjovschi, Dushko Petrovich, Urmas Viik and Ala Younis.
Corina L. Apostol is the co-author of Making Another World Possible (Routledge, Creative Time), which was published in 2019. Both the book and the exhibition examine ten global issues through the prism of socially engaged art projects, including: the militarisation of society, the proliferation of surveillance, entrenched economic inequalities, rising social movements, the displacement of peoples, cosmopolitics, anti-racism struggles, creative education in crisis, queerness and political expression, and new devices enabling political action.
“The global pandemic has only amplified many of these urgent issues, and interest in socially engaged art has grown: it has moved from the margins of the art world to being a central part of the discussion on contemporary art and politics,” Corina L. Apostol says.
Rather than attempting a global survey, the adaptation of this book into a physical exhibition seeks to raise fundamental questions that initiate conversation and contribute to the understanding of socially engaged art both in Estonia and abroad. The exhibition gives an idea of which current issues speak to artists and how art is responding to the present political questions and relating to the global situation here and now.
The exhibition combines different yet interconnected artistic notions and is not only a place for presenting art, but also a space for learning and exploring. Together with the exhibition, Tallinn Art Hall is launching a unique series of successive educational programmes for students of general education schools, entitled School of Perception. Further information on the website of Tallinn Art Hall.
Choreographers Joanna Kalm and Nele Suisalu will give a performance at the opening of the exhibition at 6:30 pm, entitled Myrtle Sisters: To Health.
Where would you go if you wanted to see the centre of Europe? What are the traits of the average global citizen? What happens to our families when our political views are crossed? How can differences among us be re-defined in ways that enable resistance and creative activity for cultural change?
The “Narrating Against the Grain” exhibition features new commissions by Alina Bliumis and Tanja Muravskaja and will be open from 17 July until 6 September at Art Hall Gallery. The exhibition opening will take place on 16 July at 5 pm.
“Nations themselves are narrations,” observed Edward Said in Culture and Imperialism (1993), a statement that holds true in our current time. While conflicts continue to be waged over the ownership of land (and resources), issues of who has the right to work, live, settle and travel, and indeed the question of a nation’s future, are nevertheless echoed, challenged or even decided upon in narratives, both written and visual.
This exhibition brings together two artists who share the experience of growing up in Soviet Eastern Europe as well as a thematic interest in transcending borderlines, the constructed-ness of national identity, the entanglement of art and politics and the im/mobility of migrants. The global refugee reception crisis as well as the dramatic transformations in Europe during the pandemic have been catalysts for these artists to create artistic narratives that go against the grain and engage with forms of being in-between geographies and the struggle over self.
With humour and empathy, this project, the first collaboration between artists Alina Bliumis and Tanja Muravskaja, will introduce inventive forms of togetherness at the intersection of art, politics and education. The project specifically consists of a physical presentation of photographs and interviews of life under the pandemic with at-risk, vulnerable, resilient members of society, a series of banners emblazoned with different types of big cats from national passport covers presented at the gallery and partner cultural institutions (including Nõmme Cultural Centre, Estonian Art Academy, Museum of Photography, Tallinn Russian Museum) posters of different centres of Europe highlighting the shifting definitions of borders, and more.
While the physical exhibition will take place at the Art Hall Gallery and across Tallinn, the curator and artists will also engage audiences in lively online discussions on the consequences of the emergency state and reflect on the challenges and opportunities of mutual aid and solidarity, as well as new modes of engaged citizenship.
The exhibition will grapple with the possibilities that art and culture offer and respond to current reimaginings over citizenship and homelands. Building upon the experiences of two artists who share a personal history of migration across cultures and borders that have greatly influenced their work, the exhibition will help facilitate exchanges that will have a lasting effect upon public opinion. Ultimately, “Narrating against the grain” aims to reflect upon the contingencies of our time, urging all of us to take an active role as agents of change.
