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‘Cloe Jancis. Wishing Well’ at Tallinn City Gallery

For thousands of years, people have been talking about the source of eternal youth and wishing wells. One by one, the blank unexplored patches have disappeared from the world map, but no such source or well has been found anywhere. The indelible thirst of people for eternal youth and beauty has not yet been quenched.

Cloe Jancis has consistently dealt with contemporary beauty rituals in her work, for example, in her work Befitting Flesh exhibited at the exhibition From Head to Toe at the Art Hall Gallery in the spring of 2021. Her upcoming exhibition draws inspiration from the influx of commodified self-help opportunities on social media, fetishizing positivity and happiness, as though other human emotions are not worth feeling.

Cloe Jancis (1992) graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts with a bachelor’s degree in photography (2018) and currently studies in the master’s programme of the Faculty of Liberal Arts at the Estonian Academy of Arts. She is interested in the daily roles of a woman, the areas between them, and the cognitive states that accompany the performance of these roles, such as anxiety, anticipation and desire. She often refers to the common denominator of personal and public space and emphasises the thin line between existence and slipping from one role into another. Her recent exhibitions include In front of the mirror, on a day full of enthusiasm, you put your mask on too heavily, it bites your skin at Temnikova & Kasela Gallery (2021, with Sigrid Viir), group exhibition Exhibition as Conversation at Tartu Art House (curator Hanna-Liis Kont, 2021) and group exhibition Letters from a Foreign Mind at the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (curator Laura Toots, 2021).

Curator: Siim Preiman