One of the largest biennials of contemporary art in Estonia, Tallinn Photomonth, taking place from October 6 to November 26, announces the artist list for their main exhibition Trance. Ilari Laamanen, the curator of the international group exhibition held at Tallinn Art Hall’s Lasnamäe Pavilion, has chosen 19 artists from seven countries, including three artist duos and one artist collective. Many artists show their work in Estonia for the first time.
Participating artists are: Sara Bjarland (FI/NL), Zody Burke (US/EE), Patricia Domínguez (CL), Elo-Reet Järv (EE), Karel Koplimets (EE), Laila Majid (AE/UK) & Louis Blue Newby (UK), Norman Orro & Joonas Timmi (EE), Pire Sova & Ando Naulainen (EE), Viktor Timofeev (LV/US), Anu Vahtra (EE), Jessica Wilson (US) and the artist collective CUSS Group (ZA). Further artists will be announced later this Summer.
According to curator Ilari Laamanen, Trance has an interdisciplinary and cross-generational focus, while each artist brings something unexpected to the exhibition: “The unusual architecture of the Lasnamäe Pavilion has strongly influenced my curatorial process. The exhibited works will have a direct dialogue with the exhibition space making it an engaging and multisensory experience. Estonia-based artists Zody Burke, Karel Koplimets, Anu Vahtra, Pire Sova and Ando Naulainen are creating new installations especially for the Photomonth exhibition. It is also a pleasure to feature work by international practitioners such as Patricia Domínguez, CUSS Group, Laila Majid and Louis Blue Newby in Tallinn for the first time.”
Trance questions contemporary screen-dominated conditions: “The exhibition explores how artworks can complicate and aid in examining sensory experience in a technologically mediated world. Trance moves spirally between humane and mechanical, fantastical and factual, allure and absence, in an aim to disorient and reorient the viewer and the viewing situation. The closer the viewer gets to the real, the more imaginary it becomes,” Laamanen explains, adding: “Trance can be understood here as a persuasive mass culture phenomenon on one hand, and as a self-reflective, or even subconscious, experience, on the other.”
In addition to the main exhibition, this year’s Tallinn Photomonth main programme includes an artists’ film programme, which is for the first time also part of the Expanded Cinema section of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF). The biennial’s film programme is curated by Estonian artist and filmmaker Piibe Kolka and New York-based film curator Genevieve Yue. The selected films focus on themes of co-creative methods, collective authorship and sociality. Screenings take place on November 16 and 17 at the cinema Sõprus.
Alongside the main and satellite programme of the biennial, a strong emphasis continues to be placed on the educational programme aimed at schoolchildren, as well as displaying art in urban space. This offers a greater visibility and accessibility to the artworks and invites audiences to critically analyse and reflect on the abundance of images that surround us on a daily basis. More information concerning the film programme, satellite and educational programmes of the Tallinn Photomonth ’23 will be announced in the coming months. This is the biennial’s seventh edition.