The first retrospective exhibition of Mari Kurismaa’s works opens in the Kumu Art Museum
The exhibition Twilight Geometry, which opens in the Kumu Art Museum on 26 September, presents the oeuvre of the artist and interior designer Mari Kurismaa (b. 1956) from the end of the 1970s to the early 2000s, revealing the diversity of the artist’s creativity.
The exhibition covers the central themes in her oeuvre and includes both her legendary paintings and her less-known early works, some of which are on display for the first time. The exhibition looks at the artist’s broad range of activities, from painting, experimental printmaking, actions, artist’s books and slide programmes to interior design, tapestry design and costume design.
“Mari Kurismaa’s oeuvre contains a mixture of different 20th-century European art trends: conceptualism, surrealism and metaphysical painting, with references to antiquity and postmodernist architectural thinking. She has been influenced by the classicist urban space of Tartu and the Baltic-German manor culture. The artist’s works often relate to past shapes and layers of cultural memory,” said the curator of the exhibition, Mari Laanemets.
Geometry plays a central role in Mari Kurismaa’s oeuvre. Her approach, however, is not a system leading to orderliness but a poetic language that has evolved through humanistic ideas. Classical principles, e.g. the golden ratio, appear in her works not as rules but as means of cognition. Her paintings function in twilight: in the moment of transition, where borders become blurred and new meanings may gradually emerge. “I have always been interested in the relationship between light and space. It is the border between light and shade that makes the world visible,” Mari Kurismaa said in explaining her creative path.
The exhibition is accompanied by a book edited by Mari Laanemets. The editor conducted a thorough interview with the artist and discusses her oeuvre in the article The World of Mari Kurismaa. The design historian Kai Lobjakas writes about the links between space, design and art, and the art historian Johannes Saar discusses the resilience of the tradition of classicism in Mari Kurismaa’s paintings. Kurismaa’s former fellow student and peer Mari Kaljuste has put together a photographic essay about the process of co-creating
“We have collaborated with Mari Kurismaa on several occasions in creating the architecture of exhibitions. She was the interior designer of the public spaces in the Kadriorg Art Museum, and has designed a number of significant exhibitions held in Kumu, e.g. Leonhard Lapin’s solo exhibition (2018), her husband Kaarel Kurismaa’s retrospective exhibition (2018) and the conceptual art exhibition Thinking Pictures (2022). It is therefore a special honour and joy for the Kumu Art Museum to showcase Mari Kurismaa’s oeuvre and to include – with the help of the artist herself, her friends and researchers – an archive of her works and photos in the accompanying book,” said the director of the Kumu Art Museum, Kadi Polli.
The exhibition is accompanied by public and educational programmes. The opening programme on Saturday, 27 September will include a curator’s tour led by Mari Laanemets and at 1 p.m. a tour guided by the artist Sirja-Liisa Eelma. Mari Kurismaa will lead a tour of the exhibition on Thursday, 9 October at 6 p.m.
The exhibition Mari Kurismaa: Twilight Geometry will remain open in the Kumu Art Museum until 22 February 2026.