Icelandic currents bring a combination of art, music and food to the Kumu Courtyard Festival this year
On Saturday, 7 June the inner courtyard of Kumu will be filled with artists and performers with links to Iceland. There will be workshops inspired by Iceland and the Nordic countries, exhibitions tours, live music and delicious Nordic food. This Kumu Courtyard Festival is inspired by A Boy and a Girl and a Bush and a Bird, the solo exhibition of the Icelandic video artist and painter Ragnar Kjartansson, open in the Great Hall and project spaces of Kumu since the middle of May.
“This is the second Kumu Courtyard Festival; the rather spirited first festival, linked to the exhibition History and Mystery: Latin American Art and Europe, took place last year and it was organised in cooperation with the local Latin-American community. The courtyard festival is a one-day family event with a diverse programme mainly in the inner courtyard of Kumu. In addition to being an exhibition venue, the museum also functions as a meeting place: a place to meet up and create things together. The goal of the festival is to bring together different communities, musicians, creative people and caterers to share experiences, tastes and stories,” said the manager of the courtyard festival and the curator of public programmes in Kumu, Maria Lota Lumiste.
During the festival it is possible to see the exhibition of Ragnar Kjartansson’s works that inspired this festival. There will be tours guided by the curator Anders Härm: in Estonian at 1 p.m. and in English at 5 p.m. Kjartansson is one of the most fascinating and idiosyncratic artists in the contemporary international art scene, and the exhibition in Kumu covers the most common topics of his oeuvre: love, identity, melancholia, masculinity, strength and powerlessness.
There will be music in the inner courtyard the whole day: in the first half of the day, visitors will hear Juulius Vaiksoo’s selection of music inspired by Iceland and the oeuvre of Ragnar Kjartansson and DJ Rhythm Doctor will play vinyl records. In the evening, there will be performances by the electronic music artists with northern crisp vocals SALEA & LYSTRO and the art-pop duo MEGAMEGA Superstar.
The festival offers a great opportunity to try Nordic flavours: the Gelato Ladies will surprise the public with fresh handmade ice cream with special flavours created for the Kumu Courtyard Festival, Hulkur Rändbaar will serve cocktails inspired by Iceland and the Nordic countries, the oyster bar Austerium, founded by the multiple oyster opening world champion Anti Lepik, will offer fresh oysters, social street food will be served by the Kadriorg-based restaurant SALT, and the Nikolay Bar-Buffeé will treat visitors to both savoury and sweet Nordic pies.
In addition to music and food, the festival day will also include various workshops and activities that are meant for the entire family: you can learn how to make kombucha from Nordic ingredients and spring plants, and small children are invited to a fairy house crafting workshop. Throughout the day, you can read letters written in Reykjavík and send your letters to Iceland. The workshop Kena kala [Nice Fish] is bound to create a stir: fishermen-farmers from the Tihemetsa Kala farm in Saaremaa will introduce the most wide-spread Nordic food-grade types of fish and teach participants how to gut them. It will be possible to take the gutted fish home with you.
As part of the festival programme, visitors can enjoy Keithy Kuuspu and Ave Vellesalu’s performative installation Eruption, created specifically for the courtyard festival and inspired by Ragnar Kjartansson’s video work Variation on Meat Joy (2013). Those interested can partake in the first public recording of the Südameliiklus [Heart Traffic] podcast, where a discussion will be held with the choreographer, stage director and social critic Sveta Grigoryeva on topics raised by Ragnar Kjartansson’s solo exhibition. In the evening, Merilyn Jaeski’s experimental musical composition A Thousand Lights Away will be performed in the 5th-floor exhibition hall of Kumu.
On the day of the festival, the inner courtyard, atrium and Great Hall of Kumu will remain open until 9 p.m. All of the activities taking place in the courtyard and atrium will be free of charge. To see exhibitions and take part in tours, visitors will need a museum ticket, and participation in workshops requires a special ticket.
Kumu’s permanent and temporary exhibition on the 3rd, 4th and 5th floors and the museum shop will be open until 6 p.m. The exhibition Ragnar Kjartansson. A Boy and a Girl and a Bush and a Bird in the Kumu Great Hall can be seen between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. with a special ticket for 9 €. Ticket sales will end at 8.30 p.m.
More information about the Kumu Courtyard festival is available on the event’s webpage.