Castle in the Air. õhuLoss. Jewellery from Estonia

Animal livers and ‘cosmic dust’ – new jewellery from Estonia

‘There were seven of us’. This is how the jewellery artist and professor Kadri Mälk described the day in the late summer of 1999, on which seven Estonian jewellery artists from the Academy of Arts in Tallinn joined forces to form the group ‘öhuLoss’ (meaning castle in the air). Behind the cryptic name lies a united understanding of the world: the castle in the air as an allegorical figment of the imagination, as a stronghold of freedom, as an alliance to infinity, is at once also, as such, a majestic palace of individual, artistic debate with jewellery.

The affinity to the supernatural becomes clear, above all, in the use of materials: Tanel Veenre, for example, uses a leg of a unicorn or ‘cosmic dust’ to create his objects. Kadri Mälk, however, regards the dark of the night as her elixir. She mainly works with dark elements such as black diamonds and corals, dark enamel or patinated silver.
Characteristic in the designs of the seven jewellery artists is their use of diverse organic materials, placing them somewhere on the border between the applied and fine arts. The result of these creations is unusual and fascinating, producing pieces which seem to float in time and space.
But look behind these poetic facades and macabre and disturbing composi-tions of the individual pieces reveal themselves, too: animal livers, legs of deer, hair, bones, dead seahorses and dragonflies – all of these materials are striking enough to pull the viewer straight back to the present.

Even though each member of the ‘öhuLoss’ group deals with jewellery design in their own particular way, they all have one thing in common: their jewellery is unexpected, avant-garde, disturbing and even, as a result, unbelievably fascinating. A totally distinct, lyrical Estonian melody, which casts an almost magical spell over the viewer, resonates from each of the pieces. The exhibition in the lighthouse in Tallinn is therefore likely to be an enriching one in the international understanding of Estonian national culture. In 2011, the city took on the role of European City of Culture and with it the opportunity to present Estonian creative talent to the rest of the world. 


With essays by:
Karl Bollmann | Rüdiger Joppien | Saale Kareda | Tamara Luuk | Kadri Mälk | Lasse Pahlman | Mart Raukas

Text in English and Estonian.