"From loss to horizon" exhibition-audio performance
Open from 26 April 2025 to 4 January 2026The exhibition-audio performance "From loss to horizon", created at the Estonian National Museum during the Estonian Book Year, offers an emotional journey that spans from distress and helplessness to self-discovery and a sense of liberation.
The curator and artist aim to translate the expressive power of fiction and the central motifs of exile literature into a spatial experience. The exhibition-audio performance adds a visual and spatially poetic, even tactile, experience to the literary expression, placing visitors in the heart of exile literature’s motifs so that the words begin to create the environment.
Curator Jan Kaus: ‘It is said that you cannot carry your homeland beneath your feet. This means that any form of forced exile brings with it a sense of instability, a constant feeling of being displaced, a longing for a solid ground. The great story of Estonian exile, caused by the waves of the Second World War, has fortunately (for now) come to an end, but just as fortunately, the wandering and arrival of the refugees live on in our fiction; they have enriched our literature in an incredible way, because although even the exiled writers could not take the ground of their homeland with them, they could carry the language of their homeland. Language was the flame that lit the darkness, revealing the dimensions of displacement; the light of the flame could transform the writing person’s mind into an expansive place, where their own paths could be carried, the fates of fellow travellers recorded. From language, a broader home than the homeland emerged. Thus, the exile’s instability merged with the continuity of our language and literature, expanding its horizon and grounding.’
Curator Jan Kaus
Artist Henry Green
Lighting designer Oskar Harding
Dramaturgs Jan Kaus, Henry Griin
Sound director Külli Tüli
Recording partner Estonian Radio Theatre (ERR)
Visual identity Henry Griin
Designer Märt Puusta
Construction masters Ragnar Kekkonen, Kuido Kenn, Arvi Tragel
Producers Maris Klaas, Piret Simson
Thank you, Marin Mõttus, Rasmus Miller, Ülle Jäe, Under and Tuglas Literature Centre of the Estonian Academy of Sciences, Tallinn University Research Library and Depository Library
Co-funded by the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Cultural Endowment of Estonia
