Réalités estoniennes

The Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris presents the first exhibition in a French museum devoted to three Estonian women artists whose work spans the mid-20th century to the present: Olga Terri (1916 – 2011), Anu Põder (1947 – 2013) and Kris Lemsalu (born 1985).

The exhibition highlights the richness and vitality of the Estonian art scene through the perspectives of these three artists from different generations. Each, in her own way, reflects a moment in the creative life of a country whose history is as fascinating as it is turbulent.
Shaped by the tensions between European and Russian spheres of influence, Estonia has preserved a distinctive, flourishing and dynamic culture from which the works on display have emerged.

The treatment of the human body provides a common thread through the three artists’ work: a body variously abandoned, fragmented, augmented, transformed, exuberant or defiant.

Anu Põder, the exhibition’s central artist (1947 – 2013)
Anu Põder is among the major art-historical rediscoveries of recent years. Through some fifteen works, the exhibition reveals the distinctive world of an artist whose practice developed outside the rigid academic conventions of her time. The materials Anu Põder used convey the precariousness of her circumstances during the Soviet era, while also revealing the upheavals in Estonian society as the country gained independence (burlap, plastic, soap, aluminium foil…). The artist’s body is often suggested through its absence in her vulnerable, fragile sculptures, which refuse to be confined to traditional forms of representation.

Olga Terri, post-war painting (1916 – 2011)
One room brings together a series of portraits painted by Olga Terri between 1945 and 1950. These bear witness to the personal and collective anguish of the immediate post-war period, as Nazi occupation gave way to Soviet occupation. A sense of melancholy pervades her silent figures, painted in muted colours, their slack postures suggesting that they are on the verge of collapse.

Kris Lemsalu, a contemporary vision (born 1985)
The exhibition concludes with a monumental installation and new works by contemporary visual and performance artist Kris Lemsalu, created for the exhibition. The artist conjures an extravagant, farcical world populated by hybrid beings, part human and part non-human, offering both a contemporary interpretation of Estonian pantheism and a satirical vision of today’s society.

This exhibition is organised in partnership with the Art Museum of Estonia Foundation (AME) and the Estonian Embassy in France.
It features loans from, among others, the Art Museum of Estonia, the Tartu Art Museum, the Anu Põder Estate and the Centre Pompidou.

A catalogue is published by the Art Museum of Estonia, with texts by Jean-Baptiste Delorme, Eda Tuulberg and Alicia Knock.