On May 27, 2025, at 18.00, Danel Kahar will open his solo exhibition The Old Man and the Snowflake at Hobusepea gallery. The exhibition will remain open until June 30.
Every evening, my grandparents would watch the news on TV. My grandfather (who had been in war) was particularly vocal, commenting on everything he watched. The overall tone was deeply pessimistic. The war in Chechnya dominated the headlines. Most of my grandfather’s remarks boiled down to the belief that Russia would never change and that Estonia’s freedom hung by a thread. If a nuclear bomb were ever dropped on Estonia, he said, those who survived would not be able to escape, instead, they would be deported to Siberia. The atmosphere grew too dreary, and I began to avoid the TV room.
But the door of the room was always wide open. I remember the uninterrupted image of the news anchor reporting in a grave tone, while two dark silhouettes sat steadfast in front of the screen. My next move was to hide in the lavatory. It was in an outdoor corridor, which meant that during colder months, the pipes were at risk of freezing. As a countermeasure, my grandfather had rigged up a red lightbulb, which emitted intense heat and hung from a wire wrapped around the pipes. When the lamp was turned on, the room was bathed in a radiant red. Hiding in this red light, as a child, I felt a creeping mix of fear and anxiety. In that moment, an existential panic took hold – the kind born from suddenly realising that the comfort of safety is nothing more than a carefully drawn illusion. The whole news saga culminated with the Russian presidential elections in the year 2000. My grandfather’s voice rang out from the TV room, steady and full of conviction: “If Putin becomes president, it’s over for Estonia.”
Danel Kahar
Exhibitions at Hobusepea gallery are supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, the Estonian Ministry of Culture, and Liviko AS.
Jenny Grönholm (1988) mainly focuses on painting in her artist's practice and depicts daily motifs of animals and people in her life. These otherwise bright details of her everyday have been enshrouded by steadfast melancholy colours, thus turning the artwork seemingly inaccessible and unreliable for the viewers. Scenes in her paintings rather tend to have the effect of emerging memories than real situations. Her work is often formed into series representing one and the same repetitive motif, thus emphasizing even more the chronological indetermination and impossibility to escape the dreamlike situation. Despite the uncannily monotonous daily life depicted in Grönholm's work, the effect is not oppressive but rather soothingly peaceful if one accepts the repetitive pattern. Jenny Grönholm has obtained BA degree in the department of printmaking and MA degree in the department of installation and sculpture at the Estonian Academy of Arts. She has taken part in personal and group exhibitions both in Estonia and abroad. Currently living and working in Virtsu and Tallinn, combining her artist's practice with observing the roe deer.
On Tuesday, 27 May 2025 at 18.00, Marleen Suvi will open her solo exhibition Water, Greenery and a Beautiful Face, curated by Kerly Ritval, in Draakoni gallery.
The title of the exhibition is inspired by a saying often attributed to the Persian Sufi and scholar Abu Nuʿaym al-Isfahani (948–1038): “Three things in this world help us overcome sorrow: water, greenery, and a beautiful face.”
The artist uses the phrase as a lens through which to explore its meanings. The Quran speaks of all creation being made from water; greenery signifies paradise and ascent to bliss; and the human face is understood as a reflection of the divine in man.
The exhibition unfolds as a pilgrimage toward paradise – a tribute to a beloved person, drifting through friendship, tenderness, memory and remembrance, through dreaming, reverie, and forgetting.
Kerly Ritval (1996) is a project manager at Kanuti Gildi SAAL, and an independent visual arts curator and art critic. She holds a BA in Art History and Visual Culture and an MA in Curatorial Studies from the Estonian Academy of Arts. Ritval values close collaboration with artists and a shared process of refining ideas. Her broader curatorial interests engage with the human body and its corporeal reality, exploring the social frameworks, readings, and transgressions of bodily norms and stereotypes. Her recent curatorial work includes Admission Not for Everyone (Lisette Lepik and Brenda Purtsak, Hobusepea gallery, 2024), Hair in My Mouth (a solo performance by Nele Tiidelepp at Margot Samel gallery, New York, 2023), and Each Person is Born in Fragments (with co-curator Mikk Lahesalu, Estonian Sculptors’ Union exhibition at ARS Project Space, 2023).
Graphic design: Rainer Kasekivi
Technical assistance: Erik Liiv
Supported by: the Cultural Endowment of Estonia and Põhjala Brewery.
Exhibitions at Draakoni gallery are supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, the Estonian Ministry of Culture, and Liviko AS.
Liisa Kruusmägi was born in Tallinn in 1988. She has obtained BA degree in the department of painting and MA degree in drawing at the Estonian Academy of Arts in 2013. Kruusmägi has taken additional courses in Rhode Island School of Design and participated in residence programmes in James Black Gallery (Vancouver), AIRY and Yosuga (Japan) and Kitokia Grafika risograph studio (Lithuania). She has held personal exhibitions in Portugal, Sweden, Canada, Japan, USA, Lithuania, Latvia, Germany and Estonia. She has participated in group exhibitions in London, Berlin, Slovakia, Italy, Finland and Russia. Liisa Kruusmägi is a freelance artist who mostly uses painting and drawing and works as an illustrator. She is a member of the Estonian Artists' Association since 2013.
Hedi Jaansoo (1989) is an artist and photographer living and working in Tallinn. She has graduated from the department of contemporary art at the Estonian Art Academy (MA, 2018), department of photography at the same academy (BA, 2014) and studied in Norway, Bergen Academy of Art and Design (2021/13). She mostly works with tiny and fragile objects, flowers, uncertainties, intuitions and sensibilities. In her latest artistic practice she combines photography, textile and clay, nonfunctional accessories, unfinished thoughts and shifting decisions, yearnings and conflicting desires.
Tanel Rander (1980) is an artist, curator, and writer (also goes by the pseudonyme chaneldior), whose creative work includes experimental practices based in language and psychology, and critical study of Eastern-European discourse and decolonisation. The focus of Rander’s work is the tension between subjectivity and the modifying pressure it experiences between interior and exterior. Rander has worked as a lawyer and attorney, since 2009 he is a freelance artist. In 2018 he initiated the independent exhibition space ‘Brivibas Galerija’ in Valka.
Kirke Kangro works with installation, sculpture, video and performance, the results of which are clearly characterized by purified metaphors. In her installative artwork, Kangro uses minimalist and somewhat lyrical means to analyze the spatial situations and to make paradoxical outings. Her practice focuses on the language of conceptual materials and the construction of meaning – looking for the boundaries of human imagination and expanding on the universal ideas of the environment and existence. She has curated several international exhibitions and works as a professor and a dean of the faculty of fine arts at the Estonian Academy of Arts.
Art Allmägi (1983) is a sculptor and installation artist. He has studied sculpture at the Pallas University of Applied Sciences (BA, 2008) and the Estonian Academy of Arts (MA, 2011). Allmägi's exhibition projects are characterised by a thematic seriality. In this exhibition series, the author explores creation based on collaboration. Previous exhibition series have been Russia-themed and narrative-centric.
HOBUSEPEA
GALERII
Avatud
E, K-P 11.00–18.00
Hobusepea 2, Tallinn, 10133
DRAAKONI
GALERII
Avatud
E-R 11.00–18.00
L 11.00-17.00
Pikk 18, Tallinn, 10133
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