But There’s No Door… . Project “Forgotten Heritage – European Avant-Garde Art Online”
Location: Kumu atrium
The wider objective of the international project “Forgotten Heritage – European Avant-Garde Art Online” is to show people manifestations of European avant-garde art that have been mostly ignored in historical treatments until now. The main outlet of the project is the publicly available digital database (www.forgottenheritage.eu), which contains reproductions and contextual descriptions of the works of avant-garde artists active in Europe after the year 1945, and primarily in the 1960s and 70s. The database currently includes works by Polish, Croatian, Estonian and Belgian artists. The material in the database comes from the artists’ private archives and the collections of Polish, Croatian, Estonian and Belgian memory institutions, and the descriptions have been written by art historians from those countries. The abundant material allows one to draw parallels and make comparisons about the development of avant-garde art in different European countries.
The database provides access to nearly 8,000 images, including works of art, photographic documents and texts, from artists such as Leo Copers, Filip Francis, Teresa Gierzyńska, Tomislav Gotovac, Zofia and Oskar Hansen, Barbara Kozłowska, Bernd Lohaus, Antun Maračić, Jolanta Marcolla, Vlado Martek, Raul Meel, Jacques Louis Nyst, Jüri Okas, Anu Põder, Ludmiła Popiel, Sirje Runge, Edita Schubert, Goran Trbuljak, Tõnis Vint and Marthe Wéry.
The exhibition But There’s No Door… has been put together by young Estonians who participated in the three-month training course “From a Digital Archive to an Exhibition” in the above-mentioned project. The young curators studied the basics of curating exhibitions under various supervisors and developed their own concept and design for an exhibition based on the digital database. The exhibition But There’s No Door… reveals the views of freedom of ten young people. The display stems from the idea of sensing the limitations of freedom but still attempting to gain it.
The artists represented at the exhibition include Petar Dabac, Jan Dobkowski, Ülo Emmus, Filip Francis, Henryk Gajewski, Tomislav Gotovac, Andrzej Jórczak, Anna Kutera, Paweł Kwiek, Jacques Lizène, Olav Maran, Jolanta Marcolla, Ivan Posavec, Sven Stilinović and Vello Vinn.
Curators:
Alice Jaanus, Lyza Jarvis, Katrin Käis, Hannariin Lamp, Antero Kevin Leedu, Marliese Malmström, Heneliis Notton, Mirjam Orav, Ringo Roots and Marika Sharova
Exhibition design: Agnieszka Lasota (Poland)
Graphic design: Tuuli Aule
Coordinators: Liisi Raidna and Annika Räim
Project supporters:
European Commission, Creative Europe
Collaboration project “Forgotten Heritage – European Avant-Garde Art Online”:
the Arton Foundation (Warsaw), Art Museum of Estonia (Tallinn), Office of Photography (Zagreb) and LUCA School of Arts (Brussels)
Design and technical solution for the digital database: Plural (Germany)
