"Joy and Rage"

Haapsalu City Gallery 5.10–2.11.2025

This exhibition brings together five artists: Sandra Ernits, Maris Karjatse, Mirjam Varik, Kristiina Aarna and Annika Haas.

The artists explore motherhood through personal experiences, social tensions, and bodily/memory practices. They share a desire to shift traditional representations of motherhood by highlighting complexity, ambivalence, and invisible experiences. These works do not approach motherhood in an idealized way but instead create space for ambivalence, corporeality, memory, mental and physical strain, pain, loss and the invisible care work that often accompanies the role of a mother.

Drawing from both personal and collective experiences, the artists engage with themes such as grief, loss, dependence, recovery, and shifts in identity. In this context, being a mother is not merely a biological condition, but a social, emotional, and linguistic structure – one in which and against which the artists position themselves. The installations, photographs, videos, and sculptures exhibited here address, among other topics, postpartum depression, body memory, mother’s illness, experiences of poverty, homosexual parenthood, and family dynamics that fall outside normative frameworks.

Curator: Annika Haas

Graphic Design: Mirjam Varik

Acknowledgements: ema Helle ja tütar Aasa Ruukel, Age Peterson, Katri Haarde, Johann, Tarmo Rämmi, Tiina Aarna, Hugo Aarna, Kirke Tuule Pagel, Marie Karjatse, Lilli Vaga (1945–2011), Lola Liisa, Andreas, Erkki, Simona Pedanik, Joanna Pedanik, Martin Pedanik, Andres Toodo, Marko Nautras

Supporters: Eesti Kultuurkapital, Eesti Kunstiakadeemia