Rooms in Rhymes

From 4 April, the exhibitions of the collaborative project Rooms in Rhymes will start to open. Each week a new exhibition by one of the seven curators replaces another on one of the museum floors, forming an exhibitionary poem, an experiment in spatial poetry and curatorial collaboration. The openings are on 4, 11, 17 and 25 April, as well as 2 and 9 May.

Rooms in Rhymes is seven curatorial phrases that form an exhibitionary poem, an experiment in spatial poetry and curatorial collaboration.

Each week a new exhibition by one of the curators builds upon or replaces another on one of the museum floors, forming a rhythmical and fluctuating whole of displays throughout the building. The exhibition cycle experiments with curating as a form of poetic, performative and collaborative practice. It seeks to enhance diverse dialogue in visual art projects and invite a plurality of curatorial approaches into the museum. EKKM’s only in-house curator, Evelyn Raudsepp, has invited an extended group of curators to join her. This includes team members who have a curatorial practice, but who usually carry out different roles at the museum, as well as creatives who have previously worked with EKKM: Anita Kodanik, Brigit Arop, Johannes Luik, Laura De Jaeger, Laura Linsi and Marten Esko.

In search of an aesthetic form for this collaboration, the exhibitions start to unfold line by line as a poem. The curated fragments are not necessarily expected to rhyme, yet the poetic tension invites one to look for the resonance between them, creating space for potential f(r)iction. 

Rooms in Rhymes makes use of the museum building’s character: three floors rhythmatise each author’s phrases, passages create pauses, staircases cuts. When finishing the path, ascending and reversing the exhibition visit, new connections will arise, embracing the dynamics of delayed meaning and disordered attention. As we go in circles, the linear-temporal strains expand to wider space-time dimensions in experiencing an exhibition, activating what’s in between, in peripheries, in the blank spaces.

The exhibition project recognises that collective and collaborative work is messy, asymmetrical, and in constant flux, yet art (and EKKM) is where experimentation should happen and times for searching mutual ground relevant. These curatorial adventures can work as independent entities, but we were keen on looking at curating as socialised practice, highlighting interconnectedness. Feedback and reflection, exchange of ideas and shared commitment have been inherent to the methodology of this process, questioning and reimagining an exhibition format (or at least attempting to).

An artwork will never gain its full meaning in the studio and continues to evolve when encountering the audience. Likewise, making of an exhibition does not end with the opening. This exhibition cycle can be approached as a temporal artwork, on-folding in time, encouraging you to be curious and explorative.

We invite you to slow openings, to re-encounters, searching for rhythms and rhymes. The cycle of exhibitions will be accompanied by an extensive programme of slow openings:

Laura De Jaeger (4.04–20.04, II floor) will open the exhibition cycle on the museum middle floor with in-betweenness, inspired by the suspended time of the waiting room.
Artists: Agnes Isabelle Veevo, Ben Caro & Kat Cutler-MacKenzie, Camille Laurelli.
On the opening evening, 4 April at 18.00–21.00, Kirte Jõesaar’s durational performance My Pleasure takes place.

Marten Esko (11.04–27.04, III floor) fantasises of untimely rhyming and compares visions of technologically saturated futures, presents and pasts.
Artists: Coumba Samba, Julia Scher, Katja Novitskova, Louis Morlæ, Madlen Hirtentreu, Mihkel Ilus, René Kari.
On the opening evening, 11 April at 18.00–21.00, Gretchen Lawrence’s sound installation-concert will take place at 19.00.

Johannes Luik’s (17.04–04.05, I floor) exhibition approaches space using the metaphor of an egg, which is simultaneously a form and a process, a tension between interior-exterior and endless creation.
Artists: Alexander Webber, August Weizenberg, Eke Ao Nettan, Helena Keskküla, Liis Vares, Sandra Ernits.
By the opening evening, 17 April at 18.00–21.00, the exhibition is not ready yet and creating it continues during the opening.

Brigit Arop (25.04–18.05, II floor) combines the means of expression of ASMR, familiar from contemporary internet culture, with the presentation of the work by Estonian artists.
Artists: Ulvi Haagensen, Kadri Liis Rääk, Piibe Kolka, Gerta Raidma aka Lacqueer.
On the opening day, 25 April at 12.00–19.00, the curator is at the bar, listening to ASMR and serving tea.

For her exhibition from the cycle Rooms in Rhymes, Laura Linsi (2.05–18.05, III floor) has invited artist Benjamin Arthur Brown, who intertwines performance and sculptures with non-reality, reflecting the absurdity of our reality.
Artist: Benjamin Arthur Brown.
On the opening evening, 2 May at 18.00–21.00, Benjamin Arthur Brown’s performance will take place at 19.00.

Anita Kodanik (9.05–25.05, I floor) weaves a transindividualist sensibility – inspired by rats into an exhibition that explores inevitable misery; one that can only be alleviated through the hope of togetherness.
Artists: Alina Kleytman, Filip Vest, Samira Elagoz, Zody Burke.
On the opening evening, 9 May at 18.00–21.00, artist Filip Vest will perform their piece Self Tape at 19.00.

Throughout the exhibition there will be tours by the curators. Continuing the collaboration when hosting the exhibition, curators will present their own and other curators’ exhibitions that are open at the same time across the entire building.

The exhibition tours led by curators will take place: