“Walks alongside Borders” – a photography project

Exhibition “Walks alongside borders” takes place:
19 October- 11 December 2016
at Tallinna Fotomuuseum
Raekoja 4, 10146 Tallinn

At the core of the European project has always been an effort to reduce the significance of borders. Today the understanding of borders must go beyond national-state boundaries to include educational, economic and social borders. Besides, in an Age of high Technology, people experience daily the process of worldwide virtual integration.  Still, traditional borders matter, and they have been at the heart of major recent crisis : the flow of refugees towards Europe and  the wide-ranging spread of Far Right nationalist parties. We are still confronted to borders, old and new ones.

On that account, the French Institute and the Goethe-Institut have set up a common project, taking place in Estonia, that brings together two very different photo artists : one from France and one from Germany. Both artists will explore the issue of borders in Tallinn and Narva. The Narva Art Residency supported both photographers locally in Narva. Their photographs will capture cultural, social, political and psychological barriers in the context of urban daily life. Their artworks will raise questions about integration/exclusion, whether visible or invisible.

In Narva, the furthest Eastern city in Estonia, with a majority of Russian-Speaking citizens, the Estonian independence and the collapse of the Soviet Union have caused major changes and the city is now located at the Russian border. Similarly in Tallinn, traces of the latest soviet time are still significant, even in the landscape (for instance visible remains of the restricted military zone along the coastline). Finally, what lies at the core of the project are relationships between Estonians and Russian-speaking Estonians.

Artists:

Louisa Marie Summer, born in Germany, is a socially concerned visual storyteller with a Master of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design (2010). She lives in New York and Munich working worldwide on projects documenting daily life of disadvantaged groups. Her work has received international recognition and been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions, among others at Centre National de l’Audiovisuel (Luxemburg); Galerie Edition Camos (Munich); Ober Gallery (CT); Danziger Gallery (NYC); The Russian Museum (St. Petersburg); and Limlip Art Museum (South Korea). Summer’s photographs are in museum and private collections and featured in several major international magazines such as National Geographic, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone and Vogue. In 2012 her book Jennifer’s Family was published by Schilt Publishing in Amsterdam.

Camille Laurelli is a French artist currently living and working in Tallinn. He obtained his PhD in Art Research from Annecy Higher Art School (2014) and Master from Grenoble Higher Art School (2005). Since 2011 he has been supported by the Smirnov & Sorokin Foundation in Moscow. Laurelli was the founder and curator of the OUI Art Center from 2007 to 2014. Since 2013 he has been curating the Galerie Showcase in Grenoble and since 2016 the Showcase in Tallinn. Additionally, he is teaching as a guest lecturer at the Estonian Academy of Arts. In September 2016 the group exhibition «Infinite Lives» curated by Camille Laurelli and Nicolas Audureau opens at Tallinn City Gallery.

Display to the public:

The first presentation took place last September at Narva Art Residency (Kreenholm)

The photographs were also displayed in Tallinn during the Photographic Art Fair (Eesti Fotokunstimess)