The competition to find the curatorial concept for Eksperimenta! Estonian exposition was won by long-term curator, critic, artist and art educator Mari Kartau. Her concept proposes that school students all over Estonia will at first generate the idea of the exhibition and afterwards art work based on the the idea will be created.

The aim is to inspire about 700 school students in the age of 14 – 19 all over Estonia to cogitate and create art work, which would, in the language of contemporary art, touch local and international visitors of the triennial.

Member of the jury, art theorist Heie Treier, brought out, that the main idea of Mari Kartau is to rely on the grass root level, to regard young people as subjects not the objects of expectations, prejudices and ideas of older generation. Mari Kartau herself reasons her decision as follows: “If we – the participant of this competition – mainly middle-aged art figures and art teachers, exhausted by social and personal cataclysm, would write the concept, then the result would probably be unintelligible rhetoric for young people or cheap populism which underestimates the target group.”

Annely Köster
annely@eksperimenta.net