On 13 June 2025, the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM) opens the international group exhibition always is everywhere engaging with themes of universality and boundlessness of consciousness. The exhibition is curated by Margit Säde.
The second project of EKKM’s 2025 season is a poetic attempt to perceive presence in everything and to celebrate it in all its totality. The curator Margit Säde writes in the accompanying text of the exhibition: “A plant does not think, yet it veers towards the light. A stone does not dream, yet it holds the warmth of the day. A cat’s purr is a sincere sign of a zest for life. Universal consciousness is everywhere and it is never-ending. That which exists always, can only be boundless.” The ten artists and one creative duo included in the exhibition invite us to look beyond species boundaries and to acknowledge the present moment from a more diverse perspective than that of the human eye.
The exhibition features artists from Estonia, the Netherlands, North Macedonia, Finland and beyond. At the glowing heart of the exhibition is Jonas Mekas’ experimental documentary film As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty, which transforms fragments of everyday life into a lyrical meditation on memory, time and the moments that shape our experience. Maud van den Beuken presents a new video work that reflects on how trees communicate between the ground and the atmosphere. Uku Sepsivart revives a juniper tree that had a misfortunate encounter with humans, while Nele Kurvits turns to everything airy, that has been once found and then lost again. Reto Pulfer’s tent made of hand-painted fabrics was incorporated in the coarse space of EKKM, which, together with Sirkku Rosi’s intimate watercolour drawings, creates a dreamlike environment. Helena Keskküla continues with her stone carvings, presenting a petrified witness and already previously shed tears. Angela Maasalu’s paintings capture the perpetual cycle of blossoming, withering and decay.
The exhibition will be enlivened by a summer-long programme that engages the audience regardless of age or language skills. Zorica Zafirovska designs within the museum a space for children, where young visitors can also participate in the exhibition through storytelling, drawing, planting and making crafts with clay. On three occasions, Vaim Sarv will perform a piece inspired by the runic song tradition, entangling themes of pleasure and pain, freedom and dispossession, land and labour. The artist duo Yvette Bathgate and Jake Shepherd have created a new greenhouse in the EKKM community garden, which will be a space for collective growing and gathering through a programme of public events and workshops. In addition, guided tours will take place during the exhibition, and an insect house will be built in EKKM’s yard.
The exhibition will end with a two-day symposium on 16 and 17 August, inviting ecologists, poets and artists to reflect on the exhibition themes. A more detailed timeline of the public programme will soon be published on the website of the museum (www.ekkm.ee).
On 12 and 13 June from 18.30, a tour of urban trees and shrubs with dendrologist Olev Abner from the Tallinn Botanic Garden will take place as part of the Tallinn Urban Space Festival 2025 (starting point: yard of the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia).
The exhibition always is everywhere is open Wed–Sun from 12.00 –19.00 until 17 August 2025.
The exhibition has been produced by the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM) as part of the project “We don’t want to be stars (but parts of constellations)”, co-funded by the European Union. It is a collaborative project between three parties: Suns and Stars, the Faculty of things that can’t be learned (FR~U), and the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM).
Supported by: European Union, Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Creative Europe, Estonian Ministry of Culture, City of Tallinn, Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, Akzo Nobel, Punch Club OÜ.
