CCA and Tallinn Art Hall are delighted to announce that ‘Orchidelirium. An Appetite for Abundance’ the exhibition for the Estonian Pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia will launch on Tallinn Art Hall’s critically acclaimed virtual exhibition platform.
Visit the show here: estonianpavilion.virtualexhibition.eu
On September 28, 2022 the internationally praised exhibition in Venice (until 27 November 2022), by Kristina Norman and Bita Razavi, in close collaboration with curator Corina L. Apostol, will be brought online to audiences worldwide. Connecting the past with the present through the lens of colonial botany and its socio-political ramifications, initially the platform places the viewer outside the main entrance of the Rietveld Pavilion, where they are greeted by Bita Razavi’s exhibition guards who instruct them which entrance to use – part of the artist’s performative spatial intervention ‘Designated Entrance’.
On entering the Pavilion, the viewer has the option to view each work from various points within the space, as well as in closer detail. With the click of a button, kinetic and sculptural works by Razavi can be activated, while film works by Kristina Norman can be zoomed in on and watched without ambient noise. The archival material enclosed in Razavi’s glass ‘Wardian Cases’ – compiled by Corina L. Apostol in collaboration with both the artists and Sadiah Boonstra – can be singled out and zoomed in on, a feature of the exhibition that is exclusive to the online platform and texts about the individual works and exhibition can be read or listened to on screen. The cinematographer of the virtual exhibition is Johan Huimerind.
‘Orchidelirium. An Appetite for Abundance’ takes as its point of departure the overlooked story of the Estonian nineteenth-century artist and world traveller Emilie Rosalie Saal. Her work as an artist of tropical botanical flora combined with her personal history serves as a case study for entangled histories of self-determination, colonial experiences, neo-colonial structures, botany, science and art. The title of the project reflects the orchid madness that gripped Europeans in the nineteenth century, Saal included, fed by an abundance of botanical illustrations that erased contexts and promoted an extractivist vision of local landscapes and people.
Estonia in Venice
Participating since 1997, this is the thirteenth time Estonia is exhibiting at the International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. For 2022, the Mondriaan Fond invited the Estonian Pavilion to be exhibited in the historical Dutch pavilion in Giardini della Biennale. The Estonian Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) is the official representative of the Estonian exposition, and it is financed by the Estonian Ministry of Culture.
The platform virtualexhibition.eu
Released by Tallinn Art Hall at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020 to reach audiences during a time of social isolation, the virtual platform offers viewers usability, accessibility, quality, and most importantly detail. It includes features, and access to elements that many other platforms of its kind don’t. The level of intricacy achieved on the virtual platform is through the development of a new format that builds on existing, well known and accessible tools and processes — the highest level of cinematography, interactivity, and basic web applications. It creates a distinctly spatial and ambient experience of the multidisciplinary work featured. The platform was selected by The New York Times as one of the best in the world and is available as Software as a Service (SaaS) at virtualexhibition.eu.
