Gallery: Art tour takes visitors to explore Southern Estonia’s periphery

Part of the European Capital of Culture Tartu 2024 program, the Route Diverse art tour transports participants by dedicated tour bus to several locations in Southern Estonia where art exhibitions are typically few and far in between, allowing them to explore what life is like in some of the country’s peripheral regions.

“This experiential art experience will lead you to explore nature along the Southern Estonian border as well as the extremes of being human – be it our relationship with non-human beings, the supernatural or our own neighborhood,” said Route Diverse artistic director Helena Krinal.

The excursion takes participants to three diverse exhibition sites, but the bus ride itself also makes up part of the art tour.

“Acclaimed Latvian performance artist Laima Jaunzema has designed both the interior of the bus as well as the time spent in it, turning the bus into an exciting character,” Krinal described. “And so the bus ride isn’t merely going from point A to point B, but rather a full-fledged part of the artistic program.”

The three and a half hour journey begins at Valga Railway Station and continues to Ähijärve, where a landscape installation by Jane Remm in Karula National Park invites you to experience what non-human creatures – birds, insects, fish – call home. Visitors have the chance to crawl into human-sized nests and burrows and see the world from a different perspective.

From there, the art bus travels on to Hargla Community Cultural Center, where American artist Patrick Tubin McGinley’s sound installation, inspired by the stories of people of various backgrounds living in Southern Estonia and their encounters with the supernatural and unexplained, opens portals into other dimensions. Here, suris of Koikküla encounter the souls of Ghanaian ancestors, a Roma grandmother and many more.

Finally, the art tour makes its way back to Valga Railway Station, where a light installation by Barbara Lehtna considers how to live in a city where, statistically speaking, nobody wants to live. This installation is influenced by the artist’s nearly 20 years of personal experience with the Southern Estonian border city of Valga, and is based on interviews conducted by approaching strangers at playgrounds, cafes, the railway station and elsewhere.

Click here for more information about the Route Diverse art tour.

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