The EKA Experimental Forms Exhibition – Room No. Blue

The EKA Experimental Forms Exhibition opens at Viru Keskus for the seventh time.

On March 10 at 16:00, the atrium of Viru Keskus will host the opening of the now traditional Estonian Academy of Arts Experimental Forms Exhibition, which this year invites visitors to experience a liminal space.

“Room No. Blue” is an annual exhibition of experimental forms by EKA fashion, textile and accessory students. Under the guidance of artist Flo Kasearu and fashion designer Liisi Eesmaa, students explored how to give new life to bed linens removed from circulation by Tallink hotels and ships.

This year’s exhibition invites visitors into the space between sleep and wakefulness — a blue hotel room where nothing is quite real, yet strangely familiar.

The exhibited works were created during a course that lasted over a month. Through techniques such as weaving, fraying, waxing and other material experiments, a simple bedsheet transforms into something unexpected and almost otherworldly. Clues to the original material appear in the themes of the works, where various hotel guests meet a strangely familiar interior.

“This time the students were confronted with blue fabric — a material that at first seemed to promise nothing special. But this apparent neutrality became a provocation. The fabric was not treated gently; instead it was bent, twisted and distorted until its original form and identity began to dissolve. The initial material lost its face, its logic and its safe meaning. In the final works the blue fabric remains only as a memory — difficult to recognize, reinterpreted and completely taken over by the students,” comments one of the workshop mentors, artist Flo Kasearu.

The spatial design of the exhibition was created by second-year interior architecture students of the Estonian Academy of Arts.

“We wanted to tell the story of the material used in the works — hotel bed linens and their lifecycle. Something that we take for granted as perfectly white and orderly actually goes through an incredibly long process, starting from the hands of the cleaning staff and ending in piles of linen in the laundry. But what happens to a sheet that begins to fray slightly at the corner after daily use, or one that has a fingertip-sized coffee stain on it? How long does it sit in the corner of the laundry room, buried under increasingly heavier stacks of linen as if in punishment?” describes the creative process interior architecture student Aleksandra Saar.

The exhibition will be open in the atrium of Viru Keskus from March 10 until March 24.

The exhibition is free.

Event supporters:
Kiu Kangatrüki Stuudio, Tallink Hotels, Saarmas Pesumaja, Lipuvabrik, Namm Chocolate, JOIK, Muhu Pagarid, KIUD Packaging, Crafter’s, Tallinn Design House.

Artists:
Adel Rusin, Annabel Mustasaar, Eelia Laasma, Ethel Noortoots, Getlin Tammoja, Heti Darleen Vihman, Helen Saarik, Janina Lõhmus, Kadri Vulkan, Karin Sarv, Katriin Tammoja, Lee Mikkin, Maigi Teino, Marcus Eier, Mare Eijkelkamp, Maria Lisanne Arumäe, Mia Uustal, Nataly Järvik, Rasmus Linde, Rosena Melvin

Interior architects:
Aleksandra Saar, Diana Alliksaar, Henri Kats, Julius Heinlo, Kaur-Markus Jenas, Kaur Rõõmussaar, Kertu Aljas, Ketlin Kõiv, Krisette Juur, Lisell Oja, Sander Etverk

Form mentors: Liisi Eesmaa, Flo Kasearu

Spatial design mentor: Annika Kaldoja

Production: Piret Puppart, Cärol Ott

Graphic design: Grittel Kastan, Rebecca Raquel Lopez Ortiz

Art direction (photography): Liisi Eesmaa

Photographer: Riina Varol

Photographer’s assistant: Ksenia Kvitko

MUAH: Marily Kapp

Models: Birgit Veegen (Agency Icon) and Yana Ronin