Aap Tepper’s exhibition Displaced Time: 10 Photographs from Restricted Collections opened on Monday 9 September at the Film Archives of the National Archives of Estonia. The exhibition explores the restricted collections that existed in the archives during the Soviet period and the processes that took place within them. Tepper’s creative approach focuses on the photo albums hidden in these secret restricted collections, and more specifically, on the landscape motifs in those albums. The site-specific installation is exhibited in the former prison cell block of the Film Archives’ building.
The exhibition is accompanied by a publication featuring essays by the project’s author Aap Tepper, historian Peep Pillak, and art historian and co-curator Annika Toots that explain the context of the project and the history of the restricted collections. The exhibition includes a dedicated reading area where a collection of articles offers an overview of the period in the late 1980s when the restricted collections were opened to the public and the awakening movement of the archives took place.
Aap Tepper (b. 1991) is a visual artist based in Tallinn, Estonia. He is interested in subjectivity within visual culture and uses his own photography as well as images from social media and archives as subject matter for his research. His works usually deal with memory and its relationship to space and photographic representation in the age of digital culture. He mostly works with site-specific installations, often using photography as his favoured medium. Tepper has BA and MA degrees from the Estonian Academy of Arts (Fine Arts, Photography). Since 2013, he is a co-founder and member of the artist-run space Rundum. Since 2016, he has worked in the Film Archives of the National Archives of Estonia and organising projects which critically address different institutional processes from the past and present.
The exhibition is open
9.09–29.09.2019
Mon–Fri from 10 am to 5 pm
Film Archives of the National Archives of Estonia
Ristiku 84, Tallinn
Public programme:
Tours at the exhibition and the building of Film Archives (Ristiku 84) on 09.09 at 6pm (in Estonian), 24.09 at 3pm (in English). Tour at the former rooms of the restricted collections (Maneeži 2) on 17.09 at 6pm (in Estonian).
Thanks: Elle Allkivi, Valdur Ohmann, Film Archives of the National Archives of Estonia
Supported by: National Archives of Estonia, Estonian Cultural Endowment, esitlustarvikud.ee, Laserstuudio
Photography by Aap Tepper
