There are more and more women in the Estonian cultural landscape who are courageously taking a socially healing position with their creations. I can only applaud this as I support the widening of women’s perspectives. One of these women is Sarah Nõmm – a young sculptor who trained at the Estonian Academy of Arts, first in sculpture and installation, and later continuing with a master’s degree in contemporary art. During her creative journey, she won the Young Sculptor Award.
My friend and I are visiting Sarah Nõmm’s solo exhibition Diaries of a Bruised Princess at Hobusepea Gallery when I receive a message from my partner that he is planning to drive from Tartu to Tallinn in his old banger of a car. Although this news makes me anxious, the self-world of the bruised princess binds the wounds within me. Messages embroidered on pink princess dresses, sugar, whips and swings create a space that simultaneously heals and breaks, inviting viewers to reflect on their own experiences. Something pink, something strong, something that breaks and heals at the same time.
In February 2025, her first solo exhibition, Diaries of a Bruised Princess, opened at Hobusepea Gallery in Tallinn, highlighting the physical and psychological layers of growing up as a young girl. The title of the exhibition itself refers to healing, being hurt, but also to creating one’s own safe space through various practices, such as journalling. What particularly fascinated me when I visited the exhibition was how the space tried to enter into dialogue with me. I don’t usually feel such a strong connection in the exhibition hall. In the silky pink world, childhood dreams and teenage pain intertwined in playful harmony.
I actually met Sarah for the first time in first grade on the first day at the school ceremony. We were in parallel classes, and although I don’t remember much about primary school, this common background gives us an innate sense of unity. Even though we didn’t interact much as parallel classmates, and at that age, the impulses that guide behaviour are often unconscious, I still remember her hair. In retrospect, this is quite significant, given that hair is a material that Sarah has used repeatedly in her artistic practice.
When I meet Sarah in a café, our conversation flows from the aforementioned shared background to what we each did after school. We talked about learning to love the creative process, about becoming young women, and also about taking a bold feminine stance. Talking to Sarah, you can sense that she exudes the same kind of safe space that she has explored in her work. It’s easy to chat about horoscopes (she’s Scorpio, I’m Pisces), the stigmas associated with femininity, establishing one’s position or returning to the girlish space. Sarah’s energy reminds me of a Powerpuff Girl of contemporary art: a punk feminist woman, made of sugar and strawberry mousse, in platform shoes and pink bow ties. And then there’s the x-factor that turned my favourite childhood cartoon characters into superheroes, while making Sarah an artist with a very unique worldview and sense of mission. Sarah talks about how, as she grew up and became more confident, she started wearing more pink, and her boyfriend at the time said that no one would take her seriously if she wore pink all the time. “After that, I wore pink almost every day, and I was sure that this would become my mission: that I didn’t have to fit into any kind of masculine mould in order to be equal to men.”
Sarah’s path to sculpture was a logical continuation of her inspiring art teachers and the interest she developed at Kullo Art School in capturing the world around her and casting it in a form. “I think I’m interested in anything that has room for creativity, but fortunately or unfortunately, it’s actually quite broad,” says Sarah. “However, in the same way that scientists ask questions and find answers to put them into a certain format, I feel like I do something similar on a daily basis.” I never planned to randomly get a master of arts degree. Maybe I didn’t think of myself as a university nerd, but this working environment suits me because there is changeability, excitement and a kind of complete freedom. Strong frameworks just don’t suit me as a person, and sculpture gives me that complete freedom.”
In her work, Nõmm highlights the female experience and questions social norms regarding the body. We discuss how the personal level is like a creative pressure for women to be provocative and strip naked, either physically or mentally. At the same time, Sarah seems to have found the ideal balance in her work to develop a broader narrative based on her personal experiences. She approaches her work with an investigative interest. There is a saccharine, girlish aesthetic in this equation that Nõmm likes, but it is also a way of creating a safe space for herself. Although she always reveals a little bit of herself in her work, she still tries to speak in the third person about broader issues that she feels need attention. All of this is accompanied by a sense of tender care that can be interpreted as manipulation, inviting the viewer to think along with her in order to bring more poignant experiences out of the shadows.
Sarah says that if you attract the audience with a lighter aesthetic and then go deeper, the viewer may be more open to dialogue. For example, she suggests that you could take your grandmother to see Diaries of a Bruised Princess to introduce her to BDSM. I told Sarah how I had just told my grandmother about her work and that she used hair in her art practice. My grandmother was horrified because, as far as she knew, hair was usually used for witchcraft. In her work to date, Sarah has used the symbolism of hair, textiles and craft techniques to explore the intertwining of femininity, the body and tradition. Sarah insists that she does not practice witchcraft, although there is an energetic charge to hair or any physical material. For her, this interest arose more from the contradiction inherent in hair itself, that when we remove it from our bodies it somehow becomes more frightening, obscene, abject. Similarly, women’s body hair is heavily politicised and a way of forcing women into patriarchal forms.
Sarah describes herself as a hoarder, who likes to collect things that speak to her – from second-hand shops, recycling centres, landfills – to give them a new home and care, but also to potentially use in an art project. For me, this reinforces the image of Sarah as a collector who weaves together threads from the world and her surroundings, making connections between them. She has also become interested in BDSM culture and Shibari bondage, where the seemingly violent practice is actually about a mutual sense of safety. “Everything that happens in the bedroom is actually very political, and of course the tentacles of patriarchy reach into it. That was one of the reasons why I learned Shibari bondage. I would like to be a female rigger and create that safe space. Not that I think every man is a freak, but at the same time, I try to be a counterforce to them. Before, it used to be a kind of physical and bodily practice, but then I just kind of dug into it. Where do certain desires and wishes and passions come from and where are our x-factors hidden, or what are they connected to? I also dealt with these topics in the context of my master’s thesis, which encouraged me to write, and during that time I realised that there is no kink vocabulary in Estonian. It would be cool to do a small project to expand the kink vocabulary.”
We agree that human activity is inherently creative, or rather, directed towards creative solutions. Art is simply a means of capturing the world around us. When we compare the society we grew up in with the one we live in today, we see that the problems have not disappeared, but there is still hope for a paradigm shift where women are more supportive of each other and more open to speak or express issues that are close to their hearts in an authentic and direct way. In this case, it is inspiring that Sarah also feels a wider social responsibility as an artist. “What matters are the collective small actions that give us the strength to be our authentic selves.”
As I leave the café, I want to take better care of myself and others in my life, to call my niece and listen, in the hope that in the future she will listen more to herself. Sarah’s work and nature prove that femininity can be both gentle and powerful, playful and serious, aesthetic and political. She creates spaces where vulnerability becomes strength and where the sugary world hides a deeper rebellion. With every small act of empowerment – whether it’s wearing pink or being unashamedly ourselves – we create a world where our diversity can exist freely.