From 4 April, the exhibitions of the collaborative project Rooms in Rhymes by seven curators will start to open. Each week a new exhibition by one of the curators replaces another on one of the museum floors, thus forming a rhythmical and fluctuating whole of displays throughout the museum building. Openings on 4, 11, 17 and 25 April, as well as 2 and 9 May.
The exhibition cycle experiments with curating as a form of poetic, performative and collective practice, wishing to enhance dialogue in visual art projects and to host the plurality of voices. Evelyn Raudsepp invited an extended group of curators to join her, including team members usually carrying out different roles at the museum, and creatives who have previously worked with EKKM: Anita Kodanik, Brigit Arop, Johannes Luik, Laura De Jaeger, Laura Linsi and Marten Esko. The exhibition will feature more than 20 artists, both local and international, including authors from the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom.
Marten Esko’s exhibition from the cycle Rooms in Rhymes fantasizes of untimely rhyming and compares visions of technologically saturated futures, presents and pasts.
Artists: Coumba Samba, Julia Scher, Katja Novitskova, Louis Morlæ, Madlen Hirtentreu, Mihkel Ilus, René Kari.
Opening night will take place on 11 April, from 18-21. At 19:00, there will be a sound installation concert by Gretchen Lawrence.
Pattern Repetition is a light exercise in display and combination, aiming to bring out familiarities and uncanny similarities, both among the exhibited works as well as the times we live and have lived in. There are no concrete patterns here meant to be uncovered, yet some direct links to our current multitude of anxieties – either socio-political, epistemic or energy and welfare-related – are hopefully evident enough. On that note – does it also feel as if this vision of a technologically saturated future could at the same time be a bit worn out, if not stuck in a loop? Or where does this subconscious urge to locate your nearest exit into easy escapism towards something ecstatic and dopamine-inducing come from? And is that all there is?
Marten Esko (1990) is a curator, art-worker, exhibition-maker, researcher and writer based in Tallinn, Estonia. His practice to date has mainly focused on various ways of exhibiting and exhibition-making, taking pleasure in both material and spatial as well as conceptual and contextual approaches towards knowledge-, awareness-, meaning- and ignorance-making. He is one of the board members of the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM), which he directed between 2016 and 2020.
The Rooms in Rhymes exhibition cycle will be sequenced with six curated exhibitions and an eventful programme, see the full programme here: https://fb.me/e/7Swf8TT3z
Supporters: Ministry of Culture, Cultural Endowment of Estonia, City of Tallinn, Akzo Nobel, Liviko.
Thank you: Arcadia Missa, Art Museum of Estonia, DREI, Kaunas Biennial, Rose Easton, Temnikova & Kasela.
EKKM is open Wednesday to Sunday from 12.00 to 19.00.
Marten Esko’s exhibition from the cycle Rooms in Rhymes will remain open until 27 April.