Hot afternoon, a little bit too airless, the studio is being heated from three windows by the spring sun. I am kept awake by the strong coffee and its stimulating taste.
There is a bunch of different objects on the table: there are read and not yet read books, crumbs from white bread, eaten apple core, a fork, a cup, a notebook used for three years, papers, sketches, pencils, napkins, loudspeakers, some pencils, brushes, colors in tubes, bottles, walnut oil, a glass mortar, different natural mineral pigments. PIGMENT – MATTER, just matter, material. It can become anything, any object and being. It is especially pleasant to know that when putting your hand deep into the package, so it seems that the hand drowns into the yellow flour.
This flour could become spirit. Easily dusting material squeaks silently between the walnut oil mortar and glass. Transforming smoothly into creamy matter, to transform later even more and even further. If the objects aren’t made alive, they are just things, just as dust on the table.
The matter could become spirit, for that one must give soul to the matter. Making the matter alive, such as the job of the alchemist, who sees, uses and directs the forces of consciousness, energy and matter and understands the unity in them. Do I also transform together with the pigment, do I also change? Isn’t it then the karma of a human to be born, then become matter again and then get closer to one’s true nature, closer to spirit, year by year?
But where are the spirits who have left the material world?
The holy places in nature, holy forests, stones, trees, soulful nature. The places, that have to do with the togetherness of the alive and the dead, because the matter and spirit have become one. There can also be a holy place in the spiritual sphere, such as the reflection of stones on the surface of water here in the material world. Spiritual sanctuary, that you constantly see in dreams and that is more real than any other room. First you have to create it in the sphere, so that it would reflect through all these elements. Through the holy forests, stones, trees, meadows, walls, electricity plugs, floors, tables, colors, through the brush and hand.
Liisi Eelmaa
Liisi Eelmaa (1982) is an Estonian theatre artist. She obtained a bachelor’s degree in scenography from the Estonian Academy of Arts in 2004 and a master’s degree from the Department of Liberal Arts at the Estonia Academy of Arts in 2017. She has been performing in exhibitions since 2003 and has worked as a freelance artist in various thatres since 2005. Her most recent solo exhibition I Create What I Think – ABRACADABRA was held at the Large Gallery of Tartu Art House in 2020.
The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.
Exhibitions in Draakon gallery are supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Ministry of Culture and AS Liviko.
