Tallinn Print Triennial is pleased to announce its 18th edition entitled Warm. Checking Temperature in Three Acts, which opens on 22 January 2022. The triennial, curated by Róna Kopeczky, primarily gives thought to the radical political, cultural political and social turns that affect Central and Eastern Europe, and it also inscribes these changes in a global perspective through the lens of universal absurdity. The project gives voice to contemporary artists based in, or originating from, the Central and Eastern European region who reflect boldly and critically on burning issues such as the rise of right-wing phobist politics, globally misplaced priorities, the collapse of democracies, the shrinking of freedom – in both life and art – and the general sense of conditioned fear and hostility prevailing today.
The title reflects more precisely on the mechanisms through which positive notions shift and slide in our interpretation towards the negative realm and become associated with different or contradictory meaning depending on the new contexts or situations they are used in. More concretely, how the originally positive signification of “warm” – an agreeable feeling, the sense of a fairly or comfortably high temperature, and a behaviour showing enthusiasm, affection, or kindness – has become a warning sign of political turmoil, social irritation, symptoms of climate change and global pandemic, and therefore a signal of both natural and social global instability. In meeting this misleading shift of signification, Warm aims to be a contemporary reflection on the fundamentally absurd global condition and on the dissonances of the human condition.
Inviting artists from the regional contemporary art scene with existing works and new commissions, Warm comprises three intertwined cycles entitled The Nation Loves It, Pickle Politics and The Science of Freedom, which reference artists and artworks included in the exhibition. The three chapters articulate around the spectacle of absurdity with the intention to dissect and appropriate it. They also playfully propose humour, derision and laughter as an antidote or an imagined alternative that builds on visionary defiance and poetic escapism.
18th Tallinn Print Triennial
Warm. Checking Temperature in Three Acts
Artists: Artleaks | Jasmina Cibic | Hubert Czerepok | Agnes Denes | Igor Eškinja | Oxana Gourinovitch | Ferenc Gróf | Flo Kasearu | Eva Koťátková | Volodymyr Kuznetsov | Irena Lagator | Olson Lamaj | Marko Mäetamm | Alexander Manuiloff | Dóra Maurer | Raul Meel | Katja Novitskova | Dan Perjovschi | Géza Perneczky | Nada Prlja | Kaisa Puustak | Driton Selmani | Slavs and Tatars | Société Réaliste | Bojan Stojčić | Endre Tót
Curator: Róna Kopeczky
Dates: 22 January – 27 March 2022
Venues: Kai Art Center | Temnikova & Kasela Gallery | Põhjala Tap Room | EKA Gallery | Flo Kasearu House Museum | Liszt Institute Tallinn | Kanuti Gildi SAAL