TEST RUN 2024 is a site-responsive exhibition in which Mara Kirchberg connects her installations and sculptures with the fragile heating system running through the gallery, right under her studio in the high-maintenance building and former installation and sculpture department of the Estonian Academy of Arts on Raja street, Tallinn. This is a test run to see how they can enter into dialogue and generate new ways of functioning. Visitors encounter the pipe system that spans the length of the exhibition space, revealed, extended, slowed down and diverted into the gallery eventually flowing back to the current. They are invited to touch the pipe works and feel their warmth. This hacking is an act of identifying a weakness in a system without intentions to fix it but with the desire to embrace its intrinsic workings.
Technician: Marko Odar
Graphic Design: Mirjam Varik
Special thanks to: Estonian Academy of Arts, Taavi Talve and Anu Vahtra, Marge Monko, Marko Odar, Kaido Kruusamets, Mirjam Varik, Gisèle Gonon, Sandra Ernits, Sarah Noonan, Forss OÜ
The exhibition is funded by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.
TEST RUN 2024
14.03.-24.03.2024
Uus Rada Gallery, Tallinn, Estonia
Photography: Elo Vahtrik
Mara Kirchberg [she/her] is an artist based in Tallinn whose installations, sculptures and performances deal with the materiality of flesh and boundary objects such as organs and casings. By opening interior spaces to the outside, she explores how human, otherwise living and mechanical bodies function and break down. Dysfunctional car parts and fluids merge with sanitary and medical equipment into weak systems that rely on regular manual care and maintenance. As such, they reflect the fragility of life and the robustness of its surroundings. Her formal education includes the MA Choreography and Performance at the Institute of Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen and the MA Contemporary Art at the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA) in Tallinn. In 2023, she received the Young Sculptor Award from EKA and the Eduard Wiiralt scholarship from the Estonian Ministry of Culture.
Uus Rada is a community art space run in the former Raja Gallery Space in Tallinn, Estonia
