SOO
Curator: Annika Haas
Open: Wed–Sat 20:00–00:00 (Sept–Oct)
Tickets: 7/5 €
No wheelchair access
Public Programme:
13.09, 20:00 Writer Lilli Luuk shares her personal experiences with bogs and wetlands and reads excerpts from her works (from the novel „Ööema“ and short stories) (in Estonian)
18.09, 20:00 Lecture by Pikne Kama, a researcher of bog bodies (in Estonian)
03.10, 20:00 Performance by Tiio Suorsa, artist’s tour, musical improvisation (in English)
Night Gallery Seek (Väike-Pääsukese 5)
“SOO” (Estonian for “Bog”) explores the relationship between body and landscape, treating the bog as a layered archive—a place where bodies, stories, and histories accumulate. It is a site of preservation and transformation, where life is held and reshaped. The exhibition invites reflection on the symbolic relationship between embodied presence and terrain, with the bog acting simultaneously as a keeper of memory and a space of change.
At the heart of the exhibition is the female body—as a bearer of life, memory, and belonging. The stratification of bodily experiences—ranging from creation to sacrifice and transformation—intertwines with the landscape, where human traces and narratives blend into visible and invisible layers.
In the artist’s words:
“The bog invites slowness. It gathers silence, light, moisture, and pressure. Movement becomes perception; presence begins to settle in layers. Each pause creates a space for listening—quietly and attentively, without explanation. Photography unfolds here as an embodied act. Light gathers the surface, layering presence. The image does not depict an object, it shapes the conditions for presence and perception, connecting body and space.”
Movko-Mägi, Alyona. Soo. Exhibition views. Photos by Annika Haas, 2025
Alyona Movko-Mägi (b. 1984) is an artist whose practice intersects material-based research, expanded photography, and memory embedded in nature. Living and working beside the bogs of Lahemaa in northern Estonia, she gathers and processes materials remembered by the land. Her work weaves together leather, glass, light, photography, motion, and digital forms—bringing forward how time moves through both body and earth, and how care, disappearance, and transformation remain held in matter.
Movko-Mägi holds two MA degrees from the Estonian Academy of Arts — in Contemporary Art and Craft Studies — and teaches in the fields of digital fashion and experimental image-making.