With the weapons of art in Estonia – how the cultural environment talks about the war in Ukraine / Article

Exhibition at the Russian Embassy – “shout your fury at this war”

“Draakoni Gallery” is located in the beautiful old town of Tallinn, in a narrow street, directly opposite the building that houses the Embassy of the Russian Federation. And that is exactly why the Estonian artist Marija Kapayeva decided to exhibit screams here.

The exhibition, which can be viewed until May 11, uses old televisions placed in the windows facing the embassy of the aggressor country, from which a multi-voiced chorus of despairing cries and moans flows.

Kapayeva says that she recorded it together with eight other women, asking them to shout out their rage about this deadly war imposed on Ukraine and all of us.

“My message was purposeful – to make them scream directly from these old televisions, which also reminds of the propaganda that flows from television.

I offer something else instead,” says the artist.

The exhibition “Listen to my scream, hear their dreams” has not been here since the beginning of the war, it was opened a month ago. The author explained that she had planned it very purposefully – she applied to the “Draakoni Gallery” exhibition program a year ago.

The gallery belongs to the Union of Estonian Artists, Marija Kapajeva is one of its members, but it had to wait a while for the rooms to become available, which in this case is one of the most important elements of the exhibition.

The artist wanted to put the televisions directly on the street, sending a signal to the Russian embassy even more visibly, but the regulations on noise in the city did not allow it. The monitors in the gallery windows now play videos of screamers 24 hours a day.

“You can’t get any closer to the Russian embassy, ​​this place is unique,” adds the artist.

“What I decided to do right at the opening of the exhibition was to offer everyone who came to support me. We went out on the street in front of the embassy and collectively freaked out. It was important for me to send a very short, but still, my announcement,” she says.

Some 30 people shouted in deep pain against the Russian embassy. No one from the building has come out to talk to them.

The embassy treated other protests with the same dispassion. Just like in Riga, but not on the opposite side of the street, but under the windows of the embassy, ​​there is a memorial wall with the family names of Alexei Navalny, and also pinned photos of other opponents of President Putin silenced in Russian prisons.

Marija Kapayeva, an artist with international exhibitions, who uses photographs, videos, archive and internet images in her expositions, has lived in London for a long time, is currently studying for a doctorate at the Tallinn Academy of Arts. Having grown up in a Russian-speaking family in Narva, she compares its history with the situation in Mariupol – a whole city is destroyed in order to build a new one in its place, now for the “liberators”.

Since the beginning of this war, the artist has voluntarily helped refugees from the occupied territories of Ukraine, mainly from Mariupol, who entered Estonia from Russia through Narva. Their life stories also appear in the exhibition, embroidered on canvas. In the projections on the wall, the dreams and requests of Ukrainian refugee children expressed before Christmas. But the escape story of Ukrainian artist Polina Kuznetsova is included in the exhibition as a collection of things that were given to her and her two children by people she met along the way.

“It’s important to me that, following the big narratives and looking through the black and white prism, we don’t forget to learn and remember the nuances, the mini-stories. The facts that either cleared up afterwards [no tāfeles], or flow somewhere. Mine [mākslas] practice largely tells about it,” Kapayeva explains.

Scrupulously draws the ravages of war

She is not the only author in Estonia who finds it important to talk about the war in Ukraine. She claims that creative people are far from adapting to the situation as it appears on the surface. The longer Russian aggression ravages this country, the more powerful the cultural response could be.

The Ukrainian war has also completely changed the life of her colleague, graphic artist and book illustrator Jarona Ilo, in a sun-drenched seaside village half an hour’s drive from Tallinn.

A house full of drawings – both sketches in “Moleskine” albums and large-format images intended for exhibition. Jarona has drawn burning cities, Ukrainian children, grandmothers… For example, a portrait of a little girl, a blooming apple tree behind the window. Only – it has no colors. The artist, whose Russian accent breaks through the Estonian language, herself came to study in Estonia in 1974 from Kyiv.

Already in 2015, it started helping Ukraine with the language of art, and was one of the first in Estonia to organize fundraising campaigns.

“Of course, I saw what happened in Eastern Ukraine already in 2014, when Russian troops entered there, and [ukraiņi] knocked it back. After that, I went to the places where schools were renovated, I worked with children and teachers – I did art therapy. It was in the Luhansk region, of course, on the Ukrainian side,” says Ilo.

Residential houses were destroyed, hospitals were set on fire and bombed. But the industrial objects remained intact – Jarona also saw it with her own eyes. She scrupulously drew all this.

“I was six times in Eastern Ukraine. My “base” was in Severodonetsk. It’s very strange, I was put in the same room in the hotel every time. I don’t know, maybe I was being watched, because there were basically no foreigners in the city. And I still considered myself a foreigner, even though I was born Ukrainian woman. My window had such a gilded curtain, and behind it was the main square of Severodonetsk, created in the 1950s,” recalls Yarona Ilo.

And – there was a newly renovated school in Severodonetsk.

“A direct hit…! Who did this school get in the way? It was bombed. After that, it couldn’t be used anymore,” she says.

Although today the same can be documented in a second with a camera, Jaron’s filigree drawings have a special power. She flips through an album with sketches from 2016. Asphalt was destroyed in the explosions, but people on both sides of the street live on – because there is no choice anymore. To survive, the old woman tries to sell pickled cucumbers and tomatoes. Only nobody buys them anymore.

“It is considered that drawing is an outdated technique, something from previous centuries. But drawing is a very emotional possibility. I have an idea, I realize it. Modern technical possibilities are something opposite – I photograph everything, then I start playing with it, something change… But when I draw, I know exactly what I want to do with it,” explains the artist.

Many Ukrainians believe that the war started 10 years ago, emphasizes Jarona. She has created her own method of art therapy, with which to determine which of the people living in dramatic conditions for a long time urgently needs the help of a psychologist.

However, she never expected that this method would have to be used in peaceful Estonia, where Ukrainian refugees would arrive after the start of a full-scale war. And that big politics will also break the ties of her Estonian family with their closest Ukrainian relatives, some of whom stayed in the newly formed Donetsk Republic, while others left for Russia.

“After 2014, when [Krievija Ukrainai] took away Crimea, our aunt’s son called us and said that they will no longer communicate with us because we are fascists. My mother is said to be a fascist because she lives in “nationalist” Kyiv, but I am a fascist because I live in Estonia and it is a NATO country. Due to the geographical location, we have become enemies,” says Ilo about the family.

In Estonia, the topic of war is perceived without radicalization

Unless the topic of the Ukrainian war affects the artist’s own family, in Estonia, compared to Latvia, it is perhaps perceived less sensitively, without radicalization, observed the Latvian Shelda Puķīte, curator of “Kogo Gallery” in Tartu.

In a telephone conversation, she reveals that she listens to Latvian news every day, and also follows Estonian cultural news. Of course, Marija Kapayeva and Jarona Ilo are not the only ones in Estonia who reflect on politics, at the end of last year the exhibition of Ukrainian artist Alina Kleitmanes “Kogo Gallery” caused a wide resonance.

She talks more about aggression and the desire to destroy, which is encoded in all people. Not everyone liked it, because she refers to Ukraine’s own history, when a lot of blood was also shed. She is not defending Russia, just pointing out human nature as such.

On the other hand, the director Dmitrijs Petrenko from Latvia, who has taken over the artistic management of the Russian Theater in Tallinn, met in the square directly opposite the theater under the design-connected flags of Ukraine and Estonia, admits that although the theme of war is directly played in this theater only in the work of Bertolt Brecht, known to the Latvian audience, Timofej Kuļabin “Third Empire in fear and misery” – just like with us, the reflection of major world events shines through almost every show.

“The theater is always about what is happening today, and any show that was not even conceived on this topic – if the director approaches the material, then he thinks and talks about it – it is a very strong context that cannot be influenced.

Another question is whether theater can be a propaganda tool. I don’t think so – it’s unnatural for the theater as well as for a good medium,” says Petrenko.

However, the director asks not to draw parallels between the analysis of political processes in the cultural environment in Latvia and Estonia.

According to him, there is much less ethnic tension, less fear and prejudice in the northern neighbors. Historical traumas may have been better addressed and addressed.