co-curated together with Laura Põld
artists: Anna Mari Liivrand, Eva Mustonen, Helle Videvik, Kaisa Sööt ja Koit Randmäe, Katja Beckman, Leesi Erm, Leo Rohlin, Mall Tomberg, Mona Aghababaee, Nadia Hebson
Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia
2018
photos: Alan Proosa
Graphic design: Aadam Kaarma & Sandra Kosorotova
Supporters and cooperation partners: Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Academy of Arts, Center for Contemporary Arts, Estonia, Estonian Artists’ Association, Akzo Nobel Baltics AS, Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design, British Council Estonia.
one-on-one. on skills brought together tradition-rooted applied art and the increasingly material-centred contemporary art practices. The core of the exhibition was comprised of accomplished works from four classic Estonian applied art figures – Leo Rohlin, Leesi Erm, Helle Videvik and Mall Tomberg. Mona Aghababaee (Iran), Katja Beckman (Sweden), Nadia Hebson (UK), Anna Mari Liivrand, Eva Mustonen, Kaisa Sööt and Koit Randmäe help explore the skill-based creative methods that have changed, persisted or reappeared in time.
The exhibition reflected on topics such as the possibility of self-contained form in a contemporary art exhibition, craftsmanship in material-based technologies, and the differences in the self positioning of artists working in time-consuming handicraft techniques in the immediate past and contemporary art field. The exhibition brought up questions like how can we best evaluate the part of the work of artists working in manual media that is articulated as tacit knowledge – natural or intuited knowledge? How best can we convey knowledge about skill? What is skill made up of?
