“—and someplace there’s me
i’m there somewhere
it isn’t anywhere
but here
inside me”

Maria Kapajeva, a year-long scream

Liis invited me to play and challenged me, admitting in passing that I shouldn’t overthink it, but here we are – at least six articles, two Night University lectures and two perused Master’s theses later – me writing the text to accompany a work that hasn’t even taken on tangible form yet, and Liis ready to install her body in an empty gallery space: a space that’s both public and exclusively inaccessible at the same time. What Liis wants to achieve in doing so is to surprise herself by openly placing herself in a situation that’s sweetly awkward, while being aware that within it there is both ignorance and guesswork involved in this. As much as she’s interested in her room and inner space, she’s also fascinated by the external environment into which she places her body, which doesn’t seem to belong there. Liis says, “What’s so delicious about it is the prominent location in the Noblessner Quarter, where I otherwise have very little business being either as an artist or a citizen: I’ve nothing to sell in a gallery and no money to spend in the quarter. I’m like a superfluous body in a superfluous space in an age of consumption. And that comes with inestimable value: freedom.”

In the case of the Tütar gallery, the space is a stage in and of itself – you don’t even have to enter it to become a part of what’s going on inside it. Once Liis’s body enters the gallery at the start of August, it will be like she’s in an aquarium for the whole of the process to come. Here there’s an intriguing contradiction: it’s as though you’re in a safe space, but at the same time you can observe yourself taking on a role and other people in their daily routine outside of it, who might also be watching you. In that way, both become part of the rules of the game – whatever they end up being – between the viewers and the viewed. They might be one-off or daily; they might take the form of physical meetings strictly during the official open hours, or be mediated via an Instagram account. Given that Liis herself has said, “I’ve grown up inside a black box, flirted with white fields, longed for a grey zone”, then where is she now? Is she moving within the boundaries of her own and our safety and tolerance limits on the playing field? This is a question that can perhaps be answered, to some extent at least, by Eik Hermann, who has inspired both of us, and who refers to such boundaries in his lecture on ‘play space and urban space’ at the Night University by quoting James P. Carse: “Perhaps even more significant than a game which takes place within boundaries is one which takes place with boundaries – the kind that incorporates them, which is to say one in which we operate on the boundary line. We sometimes do this in order to recognise the boundaries between ourselves and others, so as to understand when we have gone too far. But sometimes we do it to push those boundaries within ourselves, in terms of both comfort and tolerance.”

Liis asked me to write this accompanying text knowing that I have never done anything like it before, affirming that she trusts the process and is happy to be surprised. It turns out I’ve experienced quite a lot of her previous creations, but the question is : does that give me an advantage in writing about a work that hasn’t yet taken shape, or does it just show that I’m a fan? Tristan Priimägi once said that a critic should ideally be a fan of the artist and willing to spend a ridiculous amount of time on questionable contributions, while demanding the same of the artist, i.e. the artist themselves should also be a fan (otherwise the question arises: why do people who produce mediocre art do so at all when their heart doesn’t seem to be in it?). Based on those parameters, I think Liis and I are a good match. To put it simply and bluntly, what attracts me to Liisi is something in her nature that can be felt both in her presence and in her work. It’s something that penetrates, gets beneath your skin, that’s immediate and distinctive, a feeling that’s clear and deep. Liis is marked out by her clarity of thought, by her ability to ask unexpected questions and by a sobriety that’s nevertheless still very playful. As a partner in this dialogue, she also expects to be surprised as a creator. In experiencing Liis’s work, I’ve sensed her choreographing my gaze, my attention, my presence, while she herself quietly stands in the corner waiting for a surprise, a challenge, begging the question: where is there room for her to be taken by surprise?

While writing this text I must admit that in my role as a curator I have been inspired by a colleague saying that curatorship is first and foremost expressed through actions, not through texts or public debates on ideological or aesthetic themes; which is to say through the creation of a space that’s both flexible enough to respond to emerging needs and safe enough to risk artistic failure. I have to admit that I still prefer actions to words, so I assume that in this particular case, me creating this text counts as action. Related to this, I note in Liis’s Master’s thesis that such spaces also speak to her. As she puts it, “In order to express themselves, contemporay art and artists don’t need a set of functioning, ready-made systems, but the freedom to move between fixed systems, the ability to be flexible and to adapt to the times. As an artist, my role is to maintain my independence from a functioning, pre-modelled world so as to keep the priceless capital that is imagination alive even in the most austere of times.”

Over the years, I’ve admired the care and sensitivity with which Liis chooses where to unveil herself and the mark her actions leave. I’ve experienced for myself how enchanting her relationship with different spaces can be. My accompanying text only guesses at what Liis’s relationship with the Tütar gallery space might evolve into: how that space will open itself up, or how Liisi will open herself up in it. In this context , the questions Liis raises are unquestionably topical. How do people today perceive the world? How do connections arise between bodies representing different realities? Liis herself has admitted what she’s searching for: “A blank page, a clean surface, the kind of neutral place that would give me energy rather than drain it, that enables me to meet my contemporaries in as democratic a way as possible.” The kind of space and state that she claims once to have unexpectedly experienced in a black box where those who came along shared an hour of their lives with one another, fearing nothing, sharing freedom and responsibility.

I was struck when reading Liis’s earlier writings by the notion of responsibility of understanding, especially given her sensitivity to the present and the questions she asks about what needs to be done or makes sense to do in the here and now. Mihhail Lotman talks about such responsibility in a Night University lecture, from which I’d like to pluck two related thoughts that pertain to Liis as a creator and to me as someone writing about her work who practises understanding. Lotman argues that above all else, creativity is a skill of self-expression, and that every artist – regardless of their discipline – creates themselves and is the material for their own oeuvre. Understanding is almost the exact opposite: it’s not an expression of oneself, but an attempt to somehow place within oneself what someone is expressing. At the same time, asceticism is common to creation and understanding: in both cases, people transcend the limits of their egoism and give themselves up for the sake of other higher purposes. As such, we could say that real understanding requires us to give ourselves up, at least in part; or in other words, to make space within ourselves for another person.

Accordingly, with Liis, you might expect the opportunity to arise to determine whether we’re painfully alert enough and sufficiently aware of what’s going on in the world – and whether, despite all that, we’re willing to create enough space within ourselves to understand.

Accompanying text: Annika Üprus
Photos: Alana Proosa
Exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.