Seven years ago, Estna was preparing her solo exhibition “The Ghost of the Future Filled with Memories of the Past” at the Malmö Museum of Modern Art. Among the works created for the exhibition was the four-part monumental piece “Ocean of Endangered Times.” This large-scale painting, now part of a private collection, can be experienced as entering a colony of giant jellyfish in a bathyscaphe.
The years in between have brought major changes to her life, including living and working between Estonia and Mexico, becoming a parent twice and embarking on a new monumental project in Venice. What has continued is her artistic pursuit of living painting, which is why she will soon begin painting a work consisting of 22 large canvases every day for five months in a kind of public mega-studio in Venice.
In the courtyard of the Don Bosco Salesian Youth Center stands a former church that is now used as a sports hall. In this “sacred gym”, work is in full swing. The entire floor must be covered with thousands of ceramic tiles that were glazed and fired over the winter at the ARS Art City in Tallinn. A metal support structure is also being built, onto which the stretched canvases — also prepared in Tallinn — will later be hoisted.
The center is accessed from a narrow, quiet side street. At the entrance, visitors are immediately greeted by a statue of the Italian Catholic priest Giovanni Melchiorre Bosco, who founded the first shelter in mid-19th-century Turin — an initiative that has since grown into a broad network of schools and educational institutions. From the large paved courtyard, where basketball, volleyball and soccer are played, one enters the soon-to-open Estonian Pavilion, “The House of the Leaking Sky,” where basketball hoops and a gigantic religious ceiling painting spanning the entire space confront the viewer.
You’re now on your fifth day in Venice installing your project “The House of the Leaking Sky” and preparing to open the pavilion. How does it feel to be here? What’s the mood like?
It’s really wonderful. Everything has gone perfectly so far. I’ve had an amazing team both in Tallinn and here. It’s always helpful to work with people you already know and who know you in return. Everything was finished and packed half a day before the deadline — it’s been almost miraculous so far. Usually with projects like this, the last days and nights are incredibly tense.
The Venice Biennale is a long process, and for the Estonian Pavilion one major preparatory step is always finding a suitable space. What kinds of places did you visit before arriving at this former church turned sports hall? What attracted you to this one, and where else did you scout?
We visited a huge number of places — I don’t know the exact number, but I’d guess close to thirty. That was last April. There were many appealing and interesting spaces, like one very old, run-down church, but it was harder to access.
Near the Giardini, there was actually a complex of spaces by the lagoon — former shop premises — but those would have required completely rethinking the project. From the beginning, I had the idea of monumentality and painting on site, and initially I was quite sure I’d have to compromise either on monumentality or on location. I didn’t even hope to get such a large space near the Giardini.
Toward the end of the scouting process, our local liaison Marco brought us here, to the Catholic Salesian youth and education center, and it was immediately clear this was the right place. First, it’s very visible that nothing here has been hidden — one layer sits on top of another: the former ecclesiastical function and the sports hall overlap. That’s exactly how I approach painting as well — more collage-like, building things up layer by layer.
Second, of course, the scale and the extraordinarily good location. At the same time, this is a functioning community center. You walk in from the street and arrive in real Venice, where people actually live. In the mornings it’s quiet, but after school kids come, play ball games, tango classes take place, birthday parties are held, and so on. This is “real” Venice — the atmosphere is wonderful. On top of that, it’s nice that the rent we pay doesn’t go to old-money families renting out their palazzos for enormous sums, but instead supports a functioning local community.
In a few days, your own family will arrive from Mexico along with your partner’s parents. Will life then become even more intense?
It was actually my spouse’s idea that I should arrive a week earlier to ease calmly into the work. At first it seemed like an outrageous suggestion, but it turned out to be a very good idea. I have small children, and when I got to our apartment, I realized it was a bit of a death trap. I’ve moved quite a lot of things around and prepared it for the kids’ arrival.
You’ve given dozens of interviews to both domestic and international press, and your media circuit doesn’t end with our conversation. Do you feel like you’d rather already dive headfirst into the canvases and start talking with paint buckets instead?
Absolutely! Maybe the most unexpected part has been the sheer amount of work that comes with giving interviews. As an artist, you can anticipate everything else — big production, lots of labor, meetings with architects and designers, and so on. But the intensity of media communication, and how much energy and time it takes, has really been a tough nut to crack.
Becoming a parent is often described as one of the greatest transformations in a person’s life. Would you sign off on that?
I think so, yes — and I’m glad I get to experience it in my life. Some people have said, including some of my friends, that parenthood didn’t change much for them. My life changed by 150 percent. I don’t know how people live whose lives don’t change. For me, parenthood definitely came at the right time and has been very exciting.
How did you experience that change — did it come as an explosion or gradually?
The birth of the first child came with quite a shock. My first child, Kõu, was very intense; my second child, Lumi, is very calm. There’s also a significant age gap between them, and maybe we ourselves are much calmer with the second child. At the beginning, both my spouse and I had that “pulled out from under the rug” feeling. How do we survive, how does the child survive — those were the main questions for the first six months.
With the second child, when she was two and a half months old, we moved from Mexico to Tallinn, I started working full time, and everything has been completely different. Overall, having children has made me much calmer and happier; there’s far less anxiety.
Parenthood functions like a macro-degree that affects even things like time management.
I think so, yes. Early mornings suit me. I used to arrive at the studio by ten in the morning, but now I’m already fully in motion by then. Before, I’d still be groggy when I got to the studio, sit down, drink coffee. Now the morning starts with such mega-activity that when I reach the studio, my sleeves are already rolled up.
Would it even be conceivable that pregnancy and motherhood wouldn’t enter your work, metaphorically and symbolically, after the birth of your first child?
I think it’s conceivable, because in fact those themes didn’t enter my work for quite a long time. My first child was about three years old when I made my first painting that addressed it. It came rather slowly and then accelerated more with the expectation of the second child. I found out in the same week that I’d been selected to do the Estonian Pavilion in Venice and that I was expecting my second child. So everything is very intertwined.
Since I proposed from the start a project that required long-term painting on site and moving to Venice with my family, that naturally raised questions. There have been moments when my spouse and I felt a bit hollow inside — wondering how it will all work — and some loose ends still remain. We’ve had a lot of support from grandparents. I really admire people who manage without such a support network. Coping as a single parent is especially hard to imagine — it feels almost mystical.
Becoming a parent and the birth of a child are also closely tied to fear of loss and death. How much have you had to work through those fears yourself?
Quite a lot — especially with the second child. That’s when I became increasingly interested in historical women artists who were mothers, and historically this has been closely linked to death from a woman’s perspective. Essentially, all the stories end up in the same place: most lost a child either during childbirth or very early on, or they themselves died giving birth or from complications, or their own mothers were already dead when they were born, and so on. It was a profoundly existential moment.
Since I gave birth to my last child in Mexico, I couldn’t avoid looking at statistics on how many women there die due to childbirth complications. That percentage is significantly higher than in Estonia, though Mexico is, of course, enormous. You can have access to very high-quality medical care — or the opposite.
Men are generally not asked, when returning to work after having a child, how they’ll possibly manage. There’s an a priori assumption that the main caregiving is handled by the mother. How often are you asked — or subtly reminded — about how having a small child and a major creative project at the same time is even possible?
Since this project has been talked about so much lately, maybe it’s asked less, but of course it still comes up. What’s quite surprising is that no one asks my spouse anything about it, but people do ask me: where are your children, then?
My Venice project also includes historical references. I became interested in the 16th-century painter Lavinia Fontana, whose marriage contract stipulated that she would not be the primary caregiver or housekeeper; instead, her work was to run her painting studio and support the family through it. I find it completely astonishing that such an ultra-feminist arrangement could exist back then, when even now it’s still common to ask, “So where are the children?”
The international art world revolves around constant networking, fairs, biennials, and other time-consuming obligations — and children aren’t exactly designed into that architecture. Or do you think times are changing?
It seems to me that quite a few young artists are daring to become mothers — perhaps more so than when I was 20. In some ways, there’s more acceptance and understanding that experiences of motherhood or parenthood can differ. But personally, I think it would have been very difficult for me as a very young artist.
The art field involves many evening events — openings and so on. Maybe this is the right moment in my career, because I can divide things so that in the evenings I’m mostly at home, and in the mornings as well.
How has Mexican visual culture influenced you as an artist, or how do you even go about things there as an artist?
In general, getting things done is extremely complicated — my whole experience in Mexico has been very good mental training for me. Be patient and let things unfold; just be and develop. Things definitely don’t happen the way they’re promised or said they will, and that’s just normal there.
But the visual culture — or even the everyday street scene — is very intense, both socially and visually, and that has probably influenced my painterly language a great deal. This layering and intensity that has appeared in my paintings in recent years — I didn’t deliberately aim for it that way.
I’ve now been in Estonia for half a year and survived an Estonian winter, so we’ll see what comes out of me here in Venice — maybe something comparatively calmer. The sunlight is different too. In Estonia the sun can shine, but it’s a different kind of light, with a different intensity; the tones are cooler and don’t glow right in your face the way they do in Mexico.
From an artist’s perspective, is class background more influential in Mexico — what social class you’re born into?
There really is quite a strong class society there, and the middle class is smaller. It is possible to get free education at art universities, but that decision doesn’t come out of nowhere. You still need some prior exposure to art, and for that you need materials. If you come from a very poor family, where do those materials come from? I’ve also understood that not all general education schools even offer art classes, for example.
Every country has its own positive and negative sides, of course, but class stratification is one of the main reasons we’ve considered sending our children to school in Estonia instead — hoping that in Estonia, children from different social backgrounds attend the same schools. That feels like a healthy environment for growing up, where kids understand that ultimately everything depends on themselves, not on how much money their parents have or what family they were born into.
Do you remember your first visit to the Venice Biennale, or another visit that was especially memorable?
I went for the first time when I was studying in the interdisciplinary arts master’s program led by Jaan Toomik. It was probably 2007. Later, when I was teaching painting, I went several times with my students, which was very exciting.
Maybe my most intense experience was in 2013. I went alone then. I was living in London, and by that point I had acquaintances from many different places. Venice openings are probably most exciting when you’ve lived in different places and have friends everywhere — you get to meet them all here.
It was also probably the first time in my life that I had a bit of money and enough time. Afterwards, I didn’t go straight back to London but traveled on with some friends to Milan and then to Rome. It was a truly exciting trip.
Your pavilion project certainly stands out for its ambition and scale: 22 large canvases, a space covered with 25,000 ceramic tiles, five months of painting on site in an open studio. Historically, monumental painting has been the privilege of so-called great male artists. I remember Anselm Kiefer’s ultra-megalomaniacal project at the Doge’s Palace a few years ago — bigger than life — and it honestly made me feel nauseous. Have you thought about the risk of stepping into some kind of trap with such a monumental format?
I hope not. I’ve always been drawn to large formats, but the final realization was chosen very directly on a conceptual level and thoroughly discussed with Natalia Sielewicz, the curator from the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and the Estonian Pavilion curator. We had very intensive discussions here on site in the pavilion.
I had this monumental plan from the beginning, but when we came here last November with the curator, the Portuguese architect Diogo Passarinho, and the team, I was already completely certain while still on the plane that the format I’d planned would be too small for this space. Through those discussions, we decided to go with a maximum format — specifically to highlight that opposition to a format historically monopolized by so-called male painters.
You’ll be painting on site almost every day for five months in front of visitors. Do you have expectations or fears related to that?
I’m actually really looking forward to it, because for the past half year I’ve been doing so-called preparation work. Not classical sketches for finished paintings, but drawings, works on paper, and other things. I haven’t painted on canvas for almost half a year. I was painting the ceramic tiles with glazes that are now being installed on the floor here.
I really miss painting — it’s my normal process. Last winter, when I was expecting my second child, I worked for almost nine months on a very large-format series and painted intensely. What followed was a period focused more on preparation. We’ve done so much groundwork — choosing colors, ordering paints, all the logistics connected to this exhibition. Now I can finally focus on painting again.
I’m definitely not a performer type; having people in the space at the same time is certainly a challenge, especially at first. At the same time, during the Biennale this is almost an ideal studio — I have large prepared canvases, paints, brushes, everything I need to work. Life tends to work so that you gain something and have to give something in return; having people present is the price I have to pay. Conceptually, of course, that’s exactly what I want to show — living painting — but the reality is different. I’m an artist who’s used to painting alone in my own studio.
Technically speaking, how would you briefly describe your painting process? Do you start by pouring paint onto the canvas and then build layers?
I usually pour the first layers onto the canvas while it’s on the floor. Then for a while I paint with acrylics, because if I put acrylic on top of oil, I can’t go back to acrylic again. The oil layers are the final ones.
I have certain systems I start with — like a beam I can hold onto that gives me confidence. But at the same time, I always try to move beyond them and break them down. I think the format is so large that it gives me the freedom to do that.
It seems to me that painting has made a comeback in the last ten years. What have you noticed internationally — what directions has painting moved in?
The field of painting has changed a lot over time — not just in the last ten years, even earlier — but in the last decade it’s maybe become normal that painting doesn’t just mean an image on canvas. The space of painting has expanded; it can be almost anything. One of the artists who really shifted this discourse was Katharina Grosse, for example, when she sprayed paint across her bedroom and everything in it. The spilling of painting into life has been a major theme.
At the same time, in the past ten years there’s been a renewed use of the canvas format and a return to hands-on craftsmanship. I’ve also seen trends among students — renewed interest in techniques that were previously pushed aside in contemporary art. Historical, craft-based practices, like bookbinding, for instance.
When do we get to late medieval miniature prayer books? But seriously — speaking as a teacher, what feels similar about young painting students today compared to when you started, and what has completely changed?
Some things do seem quite similar. Becoming a painter — like becoming any artist — is a real challenge. As a painter, you deal daily with a historical legacy that’s much more present and widely recognized.
Another thing — which the art field maybe pressures more — is that painting is still, in some sense, a format that’s easier to sell. Though from my own experience, there was a period when the trend seemed to be that painting — especially young painting — wasn’t bought as much, because there was this assumption that it would sell anyway, so people invested elsewhere instead.
Have you planned any kind of come-down or decompression after finishing here in October, or is that impossible?
A come-down? I don’t know. We actually plan to go to Mexico in December. I promised our family there that we’d spend the next Christmas and New Year’s there.
But otherwise, I’ve started thinking that since I have such an extraordinary pavilion-studio here, with such excellent conditions for painting, will I experience some adjustment difficulties when I reopen the doors of my small ARS studio?
Then again, considering that I’m not the most traditionally working painter — I don’t paint all the time — that transition might be easier. I’ll finish this painting here, and it’s so large that I usually need a breathing pause afterward anyway. I’ll do this 22-by-6-meter piece in five months, and then I’ll need about the same amount of time not to paint.
So you’ll be in withdrawal for five months.
Yes.
This interview has been slightly edited for length compared to the original Estonian version.
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