"This season, the Baltics and Helsinki offer more than openings — they offer encounters. Some in white cubes, others in barns, bunkers, forests, or rooftops. Some polished, some provisional, all alive. Art here isn’t always something you look at. Sometimes it’s a tent, a shared soup, a collective breath. So take the ferry. Miss the train. Walk too far. Stay for the firelight. Something is always opening. And you are invited," says Lilian Hiob-Küttis while inviting you to a wilde art ride.
ESTONIA: HEROINES, GHOSTS AND GROUNDBREAKERS
Kett GaleriiApril 4, 2025 – Tartu
Tucked into the Aparaaditehas complex, Kett Galerii opens its former cold-storage chambers to a new wave of warmth. Founded by the Ajuokse collective, Kett offers raw space for young Estonian artists and illustrators to go wild — experimental, fun, tactile. It’s a breath of fresh ideas, caught and condensed into gallery form.
Tartu Art Museum – Terje Ojaver: “Serpent” / Karin Luts: “Travel Images”Through September 28, 2025 – Tartu
Two women, two timelines, two visions. In “Serpent,” Terje Ojaver sculpts matriarchs, myth, and menace into forms that are both sacred and raw. Meanwhile, Karin Luts — Estonian modernism’s comme les garçonnes — is rediscovered through “Travel Images,” a collection of watercolors and sketches tracing exile, intimacy, and a woman seeing the world on her own terms.
Kumu Art Museum – “They Began to Talk” / “The Mei Sisters”February–August 2025 – Tallinn
Kumu’s programming this season runs along intergenerational and interspecies lines. “They Began to Talk,” curated by Ann Mirjam Vaikla and Hanna Laura Kaljo, gathers artists who speak with forests, ghosts, and rivers — a chorus of non-human kin and ancestral echoes. Alongside it, “The Mei Sisters” repositions Kristine, Lydia, and Natalie Mei as avant-garde artists in their own right, reframing their work as both revolutionary and domestic.
Mikkel Museum – “Art Addiction: Reigo Kuivjõgi’s Collection”May 23 – October 19, 2025 – TallinnCollector Reigo Kuivjõgi’s private obsession becomes public in “Art Addiction” — a dense, salon-style hanging of hundreds of works from his decades-long acquisition spree. It’s part diary, part time capsule, part declaration of love for Estonian contemporary art.
Flo Kasearu – “BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone)” at Kai Art CenterMarch 22 – August 3, 2025 – Tallinn
Flo Kasearu returns with a sharp-toothed satire on NIMBYism, urban development, and social fatigue. “BANANA” transforms bureaucratic absurdities into sculptural theater — zoning maps become scripture, caution tape turns ceremonial. You walk through it like a city council meeting choreographed by a trickster.
EKA TASE ’25May 29 – June 19, 2025 – Tallinn
The Estonian Academy of Arts’ annual graduate show, TASE, spills out into Rävala 8 — a brutalist legend of Tallinn architecture slated for demolition. Before it vanishes, the building becomes host to cardboard palaces, glass poems, and thesis statements rendered in dirt, screens, leather and neon.
Daylight ProjectOngoing – Tallinn
A nomadic, queer, artist-led initiative, Daylight Project operates more like a signal than a steady space. From zine launches in Mustamäe to one-night exhibitions in borrowed basements, Daylight’s offerings are urgent, ephemeral, and always glowing with resistance. Follow their instagram to stay up to date for the latest gatherings.
EKKM – “Rooms in Rhymes” / “always is everywhere”April 5 – August 17, 2025 – Tallinn
EKKM’s spring exhibition “Rooms in Rhymes” unfolds over seven weeks — seven curators, seven evolving rooms. By summer, Margit Säde’s “always is everywhere” gathers artists exploring the slow intelligence of plants, the repetition of ecology, and the ghost of growth. Experimental, poetic, and never quite the same twice.
UKUfest 2025: Estonia’s First Contemporary Ukrainian Art FestivalMay 9 – June 30, 2025 – Multiple venues across Tallinn, including Fotografiska, Juhan Kuus Documentary Photo Centre, Temnikova & Kasela Gallery, Gallery Truus, and ArtDepoo
Estonia’s first festival dedicated to contemporary Ukrainian art, founded by Olga Temnikova and Alice Järvet operates as a platform for creative solidarity and cultural resistance. Organized in partnership with Estonian galleries and institutions, the festival showcases the depth and diversity of Ukraine’s contemporary art scene beyond the lens of war.
RIGA: THE CITY AS CONCEPTUAL PLAYGROUND
Riga Art WeekMay 26 – June 1, 2025 – Riga
Riga launches its first-ever Art Week, and it’s already shaping up as a reckoning. Brought to life by Elīna Drāke and team, RAW blends exhibitions, performances, and city-wide interventions. From performances by Emilija Škarnulytė, Domenique Dumont and Kitty Florentine, to late-night art marathons, the city becomes stage and subject. Check their web page for the detailed program.
Gallery 427Ongoing – Riga
Gallery 427 remains Riga’s most mischievous and unpredictable venue. Artist-run by Kaspars Groševs, the program toggles between serious, surreal, and satirical — one month a conceptual store, the next, a sonic shrine.
Zuzeum – “Unframed: Leis, Tabaka, Rožanskaitė”Through May 18, 2025 – Riga
Art collector Janis Zuzans private museum Zuzeum’s latest exhibition brings together three Baltic women who painted past the censors and outside the frame: Estonia’s Malle Leis, Latvia’s Maija Tabaka, and Lithuania’s Marija Rožanskaitė. The show, focused on the works created in the late Soviet era of the 1970s and 1980s, feels like a reclaiming — of color, of voice, of space.
Survival Kit 16 — “House of See-More”August 30 – September 28, 2025 – Riga
Survival Kit returns with “House of See-More”, a deeply layered group exhibition inspired by the Simurgh — the mythical bird of many parts. Curated by Slavs and Tatars and Michał Grzegorzek, the show is part parable, part platform for collective healing and remembering.
VILNIUS: THE BODY, THE ARCHIVE, THE SPELL
Sapieha Palace – Eva Koťátková: “Interviews with the Monster”, February 7 – May 15, 2025 – Vilnius
Czech artist Eva Koťátková brings her critically acclaimed installation “Interviews with the Monster” to the historic Sapieha Palace, transforming the space into a reflection on social exclusion and constructed fears. The exhibition uses sculpture, sound, and storytelling to explore how societies define—and marginalize—those deemed “different.”
Medūza GalleryOngoing – Vilnius
Medūza Gallery, run by curator and art historian Audrius Pocius, starts as a classic white-cube space and descends into 16th-century cellars — a fitting backdrop for exhibitions that slip between history and hallucinatory depth. Keep an eye on their instagram page, since they always have something happening!
National Gallery of Art — “Silver Girls”March 28 – June 15, 2025 – Vilnius
A traveling exhibition lands in Lithuania, retouching the history of Baltic photography through the eyes of women. From early 20th-century portraits to mid-century domestic scenes and contemporary contributions including Marge Monko and Diana Tamane, “Silver Girls” gaze is now ours to hold.
Atletika Gallery — “A Plant with Narrative Agency”April 4 – May 17, 2025 – Vilnius
An artist-run space within SODAS 2123, Atletika focuses on experimental intersections. “A Plant with Narrative Agency” explores flora as storytellers, part of the larger “OPEN SODAS: Weeds” program.
Editorial — “Soft Resistance”June 1 – July 15, 2025 – Vilnius
Vilnius’s sharpest project space returns with a group exhibition meditating on vulnerability as force. “Soft Resistance” brings together works rooted in tenderness, refusal, and careful rebellion.
CAC Vilnius — Augustas Serapinas: “Physical Culture” Through May 4, 2025 – Vilnius
Serapinas transforms the gallery into a conceptual gym, using plaster casts of classical sculptures to critique how Western ideals of beauty and discipline, rooted in ancient Greek traditions, continue to shape contemporary notions of the body and education
CAC Vilnius — Anastasia Sosunova: “Fandom” Through May 4, 2025 – Vilnius
Sosunova explores subcultural rituals and collective identity through sculptural works that blend myth, folklore, and contemporary fan culture
HELSINKI: SOFT INFRASTRUCTURE, STRONG IDEAS
Helsinki Biennial 2025 — “Shelter”June 8 – September 21, 2025 – Vallisaari Island & Helsinki
Curated by Blanca de la Torre and Kati Kivinen, this year’s biennial considers “shelter” as ecology, intimacy, and resistance. Works by Otobong Nkanga, Olafur Eliasson, Laura Põld and others inhabit Vallisaari’s bunkers and ruins with sound, light, and silence.
While the biennial ferries art to the island, Kiasma and Amos Rex anchor it in the city. Watch for Monira Al Qadiri’s petro-futures and Anna Estarriola’s kinetic empathy engines. Over at Pitted Dates — an exhibition space inside a former cold storage unit in Teurastamo — expect a neatly packed group exhibition of the finest quality. Nothing added, rich in fibre. Follow their instagram for the details.
THE BORDERLANDS: WHERE THE WILD IDEAS ARE
Mustarinda ResidencyApril–September 2025 – Kainuu, Finland
Nestled in old-growth forest, Mustarinda blends art, ecology, and slow-time thinking. Open Houses (April 19, May 17, Sept 21) invite the public in for process, soup, and conversation. The Sinipyrstö Seminar (April 10) asks how communities — human and otherwise — can thrive.
Massia ResidencyMid-April 2025 – Massiaru, Estonia
Massia’s Spring Assembly is radical hospitality in action. No schedule, no stars — just artists, activists, and thinkers gathering to cook, converse, and build new structures of care.
VARES SpaceJune & August 2025 – Valga, Estonia/Latvia
This summer, VARES runs two public-facing residencies in a town split by borders. In June, “Liquid Landscapes” explores wetland futures; in August, “Material Reuse” reimagines architecture through salvage. Expect workshops, lectures, floating sculptures, and community dinners.
SavvaľaSummer 2025 – Drusti, Latvia
In the forests of Drusti, Savvaľa quietly prepares its fifth season. You will probably encounter with sculpture trails, site-specific rituals, and moments that feel both ancient and brand-new. There might be a concert, or a silence. Show up and find out.