Sequel: Paradise Is

Application summary

COVID-19 has affected my life as an independent artist/researcher. I was residing at Darb1718 Contemporary Art Center in Cairo, from where I had to return back to Estonia two weeks earlier than planned. I was working on my artistic research “Paradise Is” (ref: portfolio) that is investigating the role of art residencies in the contemporary art practices, alternatively it proposes an idea to consider it as a public artwork/social sculpture – a “participatory performance”. This project is part of my research at Novia University in Jakobstad, Finland. The main focus as well as the umbrella project over the months of April-June is the artistic research “Paradise Is” that I would constantly reflect upon and build context via reading, writing and researching when working on two of my artistic projects. The artistic projects that I aim to work in parallel are exhibition projects, wherein I take various roles such as a participating artist and a curator. The first artistic project is the contemporary art event: Artishok Biennial taking place in November-December 2020 at Kai Art Center carrying a title and a topic: “Copy” (curators: Laura Linsi and Roland Reemaa). I have been invited to participate the biennial as one of the selected artists to work on a newly commissioned artwork. The second artistic project is an international group exhibition “Today Is Our Tomorrow” taking place as part of the Publics Art Festival (artistic director: Paul O’Neill) in Helsinki, Finland in 2020. I will participate the project as one of the curators (together with Inga Lace from Latvian Contemporary Art Center and Egija Inzule from Nida Art Colony) curating a Baltic edition of the theme showing work of an emerging Estonian artist Sandra Kosorotova. Her works explore the relationship between the socio-economic powers and human bodies, using clothes and texts as the main media. For Publics.fi she will create a newly commissioned artwork in a dialogue with me as the curator.