2023 Exhibition of female graphics “Through the black gorge of your eyeballs”. 

Kumu Art Museum, Tallinn, Estonia

The second half of the 1960s saw the emergence of a remarkable number of female artists who in many ways renewed the graphics of the late Soviet period. The exhibition brings together the work of Concordia Klari (1938–2004), Silvi Liiva (1941–2023) , Marju Mutsu (1941–1980), Naima Neidre (1943 ), Kaisa Puustak (1945), Marje Taska (1955), Vive Tolli (1928–2020), Aili Vint (1941), Mare Vint (1942–2020) and Marje Üksis (1945) from the 1960s to the 1980s.

On the one hand, the work of these authors is a keyhole through which the specifics of Soviet-era graphics are revealed. On the other hand, the works of these authors and the themes they address seamlessly fit into the contemporary art scene.

These sometimes minimalist, sometimes explosive and lush picture spaces reflect the authors' diverse relationship with the environments and ways of being of the time. The main keyword that unites the different authorial positions of the artists under consideration is hybridity. By synthesizing artificial and natural elements, by freely putting phenomena, materials, stories, bodies, myths and spaces into dialogue with each other, the artists create new associations. We understand hybridity here as a relationship created between picture elements that is open, non-hierarchical, empathetic, flexible, non-binary and attentive, while at the same time highlighting the complexity of different phenomena. In these works, the border or the graphic line marking it is often a conventional, porous, relative and spacious possibility. It seems that the graphic artists did not aim to create rupturing conflicts in the picture spaces. On the contrary, they reconfigured the world and reality around them in ways that would not disintegrate or shatter into opposing particles, but would create a new synergy resulting from the interweaving of different elements. This is an approach that seems to offer something important for moving forward even in the crisis-ridden modern era.

The exhibition is conventionally divided into different chapters. As you walk through the space, you will discover the relationship between man and nature, the treatment of the body in different ways, the roles given to man by society, but also the roles taken on by him personally, the relationship with tradition and folklore, the impact of man on the environment and the feedback of this environment, the poetry of everyday reality, the dark vibrations of existence, the diverse experiences of living as a woman, motherhood and aging. One important keyword is camaraderie, which is also reflected in the multi-voiced conversation created between the different author positions and approaches.

Perhaps the rich legacy of female graphic artists, inscribed with attentiveness to the surrounding environment, the different aspects of being a woman, valuing and making visible closeness, care and intimacy, friendship and other social and human themes, offers us the necessary clues and points of support for persevering in the present time and imagining alternatives.