Hanna Piksarv. November-May. Work Process. 2015
The international group exhibition The Art of Being Good opens at Tallinn Art Hall. The exhibition looks at the ethics of making art in the complicated world struggling with the current global crisis and is an attempt to produce an visual experience suitable to the seriousness of the situation.
Diana Lelonek, Yesterday I met the really wild man, 2015
Dylan Ray Arnold / Georgi Markelov
Liina Paasuke, All My Friends Look the Same, 2019 / Photo Karel Koplimets
Obviously, the inhabitants of every era have probably felt that it is they that are living in a time of impending ruin. Almost daily we can read new reports in the news about the problems faced by a specific species, the increased rate of glaciers melting or the effect of climate change on human habitation. Now we know that the reason for all of this is our eagerness to extract resources from the Earth and, for the first time, we can draw a direct line between our everyday behavior and the dangerous global developments.
Diana Lelonek, Center for Living Things, 2016 – ongoing (detail) / Photo Karel Koplimets
Hanna Piksarv, Residual Material, 2017–2019 / Photo Karel Koplimets
Bita Razavi, Coloring Book for Concerned Adults, 2017 – ongoing / Photo Karel Koplimets
Bita Razavi, Coloring Book for Concerned Adults, 2017 – ongoing / Photo Karel Koplimets
“Truly, the art of being good is the art of moving, step by step, through right and wrong choices and decisions made with good intentions, and reaching a new level of conscience and integrity. But what good is all this personal integrity and material morality when the scale of the challenge, such as the climate crisis and environmental degradation, is utterly global? When obstacles come from diverse societal understandings of morality, and from relentless materialism driven by the competition between countries, companies and groups?” Aet Annist asks in her essay published in the exhibition guide. What would an art look like that is responsible for the era?
Uku Sepsivart, Bee Dependent Existence, 2018 / Photo Karel Koplimets
The Idiots, The Hazard of Being Good, 2019
The Art of Being Good, exhibition view / Photo Karel Koplimets
“Although tackling the ecological, social and economic components of the crisis is normal in art, artworks and exhibitions rarely direct attention towards their own role in the ruinous sequence of events. Therefore, we see a record of the people living in poverty, who don’t receive a cut from the profits of exhibiting the work depicting them, and artworks created from poisonous artificial materials, which warn us of the impending plastic dystopia,” writes Siim Preiman in the text accompanying the exhibition.
Carl Giffney, Still from the video “Iarnród / Ironroad“ (2019)
The Art of Being Good, exhibition view / Photo Karel Koplimets
Roi Vaara, Still from the video “Artist’s Dilemma” (1997)
The value of each artwork or event certainly cannot be judged based on its ecological footprint alone nor indeed on its social impact, but we can judge the ethical balance between the form and content of a single artwork. The exhibition The Art of Being Good offers alternative ways to continue vital (art) practices in a stressful informationally polluted contemporary situation. The artists participating in this exhibition work with very different subjects and materials using a variety of methods. All of their work is nevertheless connected to their own values and actions as individuals.
Dylan Ray Arnold, “Springtears absorbed in / Phrasefingers growth diagram / Saturating fibers, constant garden, / Clutter moved new messages“ (2019)
Taus Makhacheva, Still from the video “Baida” (2017) / Photo Karel Koplimets
The Yes Men Fix the World, Accompanying film at Cinema Soprus
The Art of Being Good is an institutional attempt to find an ethically suitable platform for tackling the burning issues, which is why this time we have excluded all the single use components of the standard recipe for a contemporary art exhibition and have only used the material found at the venue, and as little of that as possible.
The 2019 exhibition program at Tallinn Art Hall directs special attention towards the possibility of being good and ecologically responsible in the circumstances of certain ruin. Five exhibitions congregate around these themes, of which The Art of Being Good is the third. The previous exhibitions were Taavi Suisalu’s Ocean Botlightsat the City Gallery and Britta Benno’s Dystopic Tallinn at the Art Hall Gallery. The curator of this series of exhibitions is Siim Preiman.
Participating artists: Dylan Ray Arnold, Carl Giffney, Diana Lelonek, Taus Makhacheva, Georgi Markelov, Eléonore de Montesquiou, Jana Shostak and Jakub Jasiukiewicz, Hanna Piksarv, Liina Pääsuke, Bita Razavi, Uku Sepsivart, The Idiots, Roi Vaara, Mari Volens.
The Art of Being Good
June 22 – September 1, 2019 / Tallinn Art Hall
Curated by Siim Preiman
Visit the exhibition page >
