Gardens: Tanja Muravskaja and Light

05.09 – 31.10.2025

Exhibition designer: Jevgeni Zolotko Consultant: Elnara Taidre
Installation: Mihkel Lember
Graphic designer: Kert Viiart-Õllek

Open:
Wed–Sat 13:00–19:00

Free entrance
Limited wheelchair access

Public Programme:
13.09, 14:00 Guided tour (in Estonian)
20.09, 14:00 Artist talk (in Estonian)

Thanks to:
Estonian Academy of Arts, Estonian Artists’ Association, Hedi Jaansoo, Kai Art Center, Laur Kivistik, Anna Loginov, Vladimir Loginov, Taavi Rekkaro, Sirje Runge, Mėta Valiušaitytė, Ellington Printing & Production, Veiko Illiste

The exhibition is part of the main programme of the 8th Tallinn Photomonth

Saarinen House (Pärnu mnt 10, 5th floor)

Tanja Muravskaja’s new work Gardens explores the boundaries between reality and image, as she gives the organic and living a fixed form, materialised through photography. Working with water as a real (source) material serves as a strategy for slowing down and so offering a counterpoint to the automated visual flows of the digital age. The individual photographs in the series are not mere visual images but events captured at the moment of their occurrence, when light and time turn into physical matter.

The display immerses the viewer in an experience of phenomenological presence, as their attention moves from recognition of the form to the sensual and sensory perception of the material. The series is an invite for “slow contemplation”, through which it explores the liminal areas between the visible and the invisible before guiding the viewer back to a heightened state of physical presence and perception of the world.

The project was born from professional memory and developed into an independent statement on the intersection of institutional conditions, architecture and the artist’s perspective. All the photographs in the exhibition were printed by the artist herself, a process that allowed her to take full control of the paper’s nuances of texture and colour while also becoming an inherent extension of the artist’s observations and their results captured on camera.

Tanja Muravskaja (b. 1978 in Pärnu, lives and works in Tallinn) is an esteemed Estonian artist whose work focuses on questions of identity, collective and personal memory, and social boundaries.

Muravskaja graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts with a BA and, later, a Master’s in photography. She also studied photography at the University of Westminster in London, where she spent an exchange year. Her analytical and psychological approach sheds light on themes related to internal tensions and a sense of belonging, both on an individual and a social level.

Muravskaja’s works – including her principal photographic series Positions, Estonian Race, They Who Sang Together, Self-portrait with the Estonian Flag and various video works – are part of the collections of the Art Museum of Estonia, Tartu Art Museum and multiple private collections, reflecting the significant place she has in Estonian art history. She has had solo exhibitions at Tensta Konsthall (Stockholm), WIELS (Brussels) and Tartu Art Museum. She has also participated in various international exhibitions, including at EMST at the National Museum of Contemporary Art (Athens), MOCAK (Kraków), the Art Encounters Biennial (Timișoara), the GIBCA Biennial (Gothenburg), Ludwig Museum (Budapest), MACRO (Rome), and Kiasma (Helsinki). She has received various accolades, including the Köler Prize Grand Prix (2018) and the Order of the White Star, 5th class, bestowed by the President of the Republic of Estonia (2019).