Exhibitions 2018
Estonia Through 100 Pairs of Eyes
The photo exhibition “Estonia Through 100 Pairs of Eyes” is opened during Worldfilm festival 2018.
The exhibition will be dedicated to the centenary of the Republic of Estonia and is made up of portraits as well as photographs capturing Estonian moments by Toomas Volkmann, Tõnu Tunnel, and Tõnu Runnel. The photographs tell the story of Estonia during the past century.
“The photos capture dedicated bearers of Estonian culture. There are famous Estonians, as well as many who are unknown to the public. The oldest of those photographed was born in 1918 and the youngest in 2017, which means that there is a portrait representing each year that the Republic of Estonia has existed,” described Kaire van der Toorn-Guthan, one of the organisers of this exhibition.
The exhibition also features 100 views of the most popular places, buildings, emotions, achievements, and phenomena of Estonia, which will also help people, who are unfamiliar with Estonia, to get a sense of our culture, nature, technological achievements, cuisine, and traditions. The visuals are brought into a comprehensive whole by short texts in
Estonian and English.
The portraits were captured by photographer Toomas Volkmann, co-author of the exhibition, and the photographers of the national scenes are Tõnu Tunnel and Tõnu Runnel. The exhibition will be open in lobby B of the Estonian National Museum until 31 March 2018.
Curators: Karin van der Toorn Guthan
Texts: Tiiu Suvi, Piret Jaaks, Mirjam Matiisen, Helina Piip
Sound: Sven Sosnitski
Timeshift. The initiation ceremonies of the Udmurt 1993/2017
This exhibition gives us the opportunity to move through time thanks to the camera lens, which recorded the initiation rituals of Udmurt boys and girls. This kind of ritual is not often found in Europe, and it has been preserved only in one place even by the Udmurt, in Tatarstan, in the Udmurt village of Varkled Bodya (Agryz district). This tradition has been uninterrupted remaining intact even during the Soviet period, and it is very much alive today.
This exhibition presents some moments of these initiation rituals recorded in April 1993 and 2017. The authors of both photos and videos are two research groups working independently, using the recording technique of the period: a film camera in 1993, and a digital camera in 2017. Made by different authors, approximately one quarter of a century separates photographs and video recordings. Nevertheless, we find in them many recurring themes. It is interesting to observe that in the two rituals, the camera has recorded two generations, with the children of those initiated in 1993 participating in 2017.
The exhibition has been achieved in cooperation between the Estonian National Museum and the Udmurt Kuzebai Gerd National Museum (Izhevsk, Russia). With the support of the Estonian Education and research ministry’s Kindred Peoples Programme.
Curators: Nikolai Anisimov, Svetlana Karm, Arp Karm and Eva Toulouze
Desginer: Jane Liiv
Photos: Arp Karm 1993, Eva Toulouze, Nikolai Anisimov 2017
Video: Aado Lintrop 1993, Nikolai Anisimov 2017
Idea & project: Svetlana Karm