Longing for Lost Space. Sirja-Liisa Eelma 05/09/2024 – 30/03/2025

Sirja-Liisa Eelma (1973) is a minimalist conceptual painter whose oeuvre mainly deals with emptiness, silence and the relationship between the visible and the invisible. Her art is characterised by meditativeness and gentleness, and her works offer the viewer space for moments of rest and introspection. Eelma is fascinated by the poetics of space. Her paintings and installations are often site-specific and based on the principle of seemingly repetitive images, as well as varying combinations of shades and motifs. The artist’s use of predominantly pastel colours is sensitive, considered and nuanced. The scenes in Eelma’s paintings often exude sacral lightness, transcendence and a yearning for a lost paradise.

Eelma is interested in space that is not yet full of meanings, space that existed before us. Her art includes references to different epochs, architectural styles and interiors, yet she does not pursue historical accuracy. The initial impulses for the exhibition Longing for Lost Space were a sense of silence and timelessness emanating from 19^th-century Biedermeier interiors, and the possible meanings and interactions between hidden and visible spaces.

Eelma was inspired by the painting Scene in Bluhm’s House (1841) by Carl Sigismund Walther, included in the permanent exhibition of the Kumu Art Museum. The painting depicts the wife of Hermann Bluhm, the city doctor of Tallinn, on her deathbed, being cared for by her daughter and stepdaughter. This Baltic-German painting is exceptional because it depicts with historical accuracy a concrete family and their house in Tallinn. Eelma perceives in that painting a certain timelessness, a metaphysical dimension and an inexplicable sense of silence. She is fascinated by the way Walther has depicted the interior scene. Eelma conducted a thorough research and a picture analysis; she also visited two flats in the house at 57 Pikk Street and recorded her findings.

At the Kumu exhibition, Eelma has entered into a dialogue with the atmosphere and the details of the room in Walther’s painting as well as with the elements of the depicted characters’ clothes. The display also includes sketches and drawings, photographic material from the artist’s aforementioned visits to the house, records of her first encounters with the cyanotype technique and, of course, Walther’s actual painting. By referring to open meanings of images and potential time-transcending links between people and spaces, Eelma has brought the initially unnoticed details of the historical painting into focus, and has entered into a conceptual dialogue with them through her unique artistic language.

Team

Curator: Brigita Reinert
Exhibition design: Kaarel Eelma
Graphic design: Tuuli Aule
Sound design: Lauri Lest

Exhibition team: Richard Adang, Andres Amos, Darja Jefimova, Tõnis Jürgens, Mari Kangur, Maria Lota Lumiste, Kaidi Saavan, Stanislav Stepaško, Laura Tahk and Madli Valk