Art Week in Pärnu takes a deep dive into Nordic art

  • 2022-06-27

22-30 July 2022 the summer capital of Estonia welcomes  Art Week again. This year the week-long festival takes a closer look at Nordic art through the eyes of Norwegian curator Marita Isobel Solberg (MaRa) – to see who we really are and the time we live in.

MaRA is (b. 1977) a Norwegian musician, artist and sorcerer focusing on performance, sound art and installation. MaRA's ancestors’ roots are among many northern peoples: the Sámi, the Swedish, the Kvens, the Karelians and the Finns. She has grown up in an environment closely linked to nature, crafts and seasonal work and explored the possibilities of expression through art and various music genres. The common denominator of her projects is to challenge both, the audience and herself, to try to get to the core and create vibrations with a backfire.

The events of the art week will take place in the streets and beaches of Pärnu well as in Pärnu Loovlinnak (Pärnu Cultural Center), which was opened last year in the historical brewery of Pärnu (Suur-Jõe 10, Pärnu). This year, the Pärnu Cultural Center Summer Gallery has opened its doors, and the peculiarity of the intense international summer program is characterized by the synthesis of different creative institutions.

According to Al Paldrok, the leader of Pärnu Cultural Center and the founding member of the legendary performance group Non Grata, the cultural center is a gem worth discovering right now. “In many cultural centers around the world, the creative activity that gave the original association its name has largely been replaced by a hipster consumer environment, but Pärnu Cultural Center is a real gem to discover - the cultural center run by creative people themselves, not real estate agents and management companies. Since last year, silk-screen printing, book publishing, painting and poetry radio studios started working on the premises of the historic brewery,” he adds. 

Pärnu Art Week introduces the latest trends in the art landscape, and the work of Estonian and Nordic artists, while offering educational entertainment for the whole family. The history of the art weeks goes back decades, but since 2016 it is under the leadership of the Nordic Baltic Art Center NOBA and this year in cooperation with Loovlinnak MTÜ. The program of this year's Pärnu Art Week is created in cooperation with the local art institutions of the summer capital and with the support of the Pärnu City Government and the Nordisk Culture Fund.

 More information on the web www.kunstinadal.ee.