We invite everyone on Saturday, August 29, to Ida-Viru County for the finissage of the exhibition “Excursion” (Väljasõit).
The day begins at 1:30 PM at the Kohtla-Järve Central Square outdoor exhibition “How to Reframe Monuments: The Past as Artistic Material,” which examines the ways contemporary art can engage with Soviet heritage and associated memory conflicts. We will also make a short detour to the miners’ monument “Glory to Work!” (1967, by Olavi Männi and Udo Ivask) located nearby.
From the Central Square, we will head to the industrial landscape on the outskirts of Kohtla-Järve, home to the legendary “phenol swamp.” Its formation is tied to decades of oil shale plant operations: contaminated water leaked from semi-coke and industrial waste mounds into the lower wetlands. Today, the environmental condition there has improved significantly, but the area is still registered as a residual pollution site. The history of the phenol swamp will be introduced by Ainar Varinurm, director of the Kohtla-Järve Oil Shale Museum.
At 3:00 PM, guided tours will follow at the Stalker Museum exhibition “Excursion” (Väljasõit) and the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA) exhibition “The Image is Illustrative II: Monumental Painting in an Industrial Landscape” in the Kukruse Stalinist club building (Lehe St 10a). The group exhibition combines industrial heritage, the history of Ida-Viru County, and contemporary art. On display are works by Peeter Laurits, Arne Maasik, Raoul Kurvitz, Ernst Hallop, and others, as well as contemporary interventions by Anna Škodenko, Hanna Piksarv, Jevgeni Zolotko, Kati Saarits, and Sigrid Viir into the Socialist Realist monumental paintings of Tallinn Airport.
The guided tours will be followed by a walking tour of the Kukruse settlement led by Ainar Varinurm.
Afterward, everyone is welcome to enjoy the Kukruse Cafe Day (please bring cash).
At 5:00 PM, the day will conclude at the club building with a performance by Ants1, a punk collective originating from the Estonian Academy of Arts.
Transport from Tallinn (NB! €5, registration required here) A bus leaving for Ida-Viru County departs from Tallinn at 11:00 AM in front of the Estonian Academy of Arts (Põhja pst 7). The return trip to Tallinn departs from the Kukruse club building (Lehe St 10a) at 6:30 PM.
The exhibitions and displayed works are part of the joint research project “How to Reframe Monuments” (2024–2026) by the Estonian Academy of Arts and Tallinn University, funded by the Estonian Ministry of Culture. The goal of the project is to create new solutions for rethinking monuments and other dissonant heritage by bringing together knowledge and skills from various fields and involving diverse stakeholder groups and communities.