On Thursday, 9 April at 6:00 PM, a solo exhibition Pink room for remembering by contemporary artist Erik Hõim opened at Draakoni Gallery.
We sink into our memories, at times even drown in them. It can seem as if the past is still here, living with us. But memory is deceitful and imperfect; it always loses and changes things. Details disappear into the quiet of forgetting, allowing us to move forward and be present, stopping it all from becoming too much to bear.
Yet, involuntarily, we fall back into our little images, into smells, colours and places that we’ve been and people we’ve seen. We fall into the way the sun hung in the sky outside the window on a certain day and how it cast the shadow of a tree onto the ground. It’s as if we are searching our memories for some kind of singularity into which we must dissolve, whether we like it or not.
A shabby little stage, its window losing its shape, the furniture inside has lost its proportions and the tree that grew outside the window has been reduced to a ghostly sketch. It’s as if someone has been here. Someone was lying down, another sat, stood guard and took care of things. Only fragments of them are now remembered. The scene still plays in its little box, but it is something else than reality: it’s a play, a memory.
A lonesome foal lies on the ground. Poor, sad thing. We mourn the ones we’ve lost, take care of our sick and feel sorry for helpless little animals. It’s human to care. It’s human to remember.
Erik Hõim (2001) is a freelance artist and art worker living and working in Tallinn. He has a bachelor’s degree in photography from the Estonian Academy of Arts and has furthered his studies in the same field in Prague, at FAMU. It can be said that he is interested in the human condition. His visual practice is characterised by installation, staging and deliberate roughness, which he has expressed using the means of photography, video, installation, sculpture and performance. He is part of the fictional artist Uru Valter and a member of the Estonian Youth Contemporary Art Association. He has received the Estonian Youth Contemporary Art Association’s weekly award, the audience award of the Summer Exhibition and has participated in exhibitions in Tallinn, Võru, Urbino and Prague.
Toetab/Supported by: Kultuurkapital/Cultural Endowment of Estonia
Graafiline disain/Graphic design: Mette Mari Kaljas
Kunstnik tänab/Special thanks to: Ats Kruusing, Mette Mari Kaljas, Johannes Säre, Mattias Veller, Johannes Luik, Hanna Samoson, Kadri Joala, Hans-Otto Ojaste, Eke Ao Nettan, EKL galeriid.
