Kuraatori eessõna

I have lived in Tallinn my entire life. During this time, I have had seven homes in five different neighbourhoods. The longest I have been away is a couple of weeks at a time. I know people whose list of homes is much longer, spanning even planetary distances. Then again, I have heard of an old man who lived on the small Estonian island of Kihnu and never once in his life saw the other end of the island. I only moved to Lasnamäe five years ago, but by now, I already feel at home here. What does that actually mean?

Home seems to be one of those concepts – like friendship, happiness or mother – that everyone feels and understands, but always in their own unique way. Trying to describe or explain it can lead to an avalanche of endless words and ideas. Home can be a specific place, but it can also be a feeling that grows from a collection of habits and activities, routines and rituals that bring meaning to life. We experience a sense of home individually, yet, according to administrative boundaries, we share our place of residence with dozens, hundreds or even thousands of others.

Sometimes it seems to me that Lasnamäe is the largest city I have ever lived in. Over time, this district has held a variety of superlatives: the most populated, the newest, the most modern, the most prestigious, the most Russian-speaking, the cheapest, the most scorned. Lasnamäe is clearly either loved or hated, with little room for anything in between. For me, however, I like things just as they are. Contradiction enriches and energises life, giving it tension and vibrancy. That is why this place is both fascinating and peculiar to me, simply because it exists at all.

My Home, Our City is, above all, an exhibition about the experience of living alone in a large city. It emerges from a complex web of fulfilled and unfulfilled expectations and hopes, not unique to Lasnamäe but resonant in modernist cities worldwide. The pavilion itself can be viewed as a kind of box set with photo and video works gathered within, creating a gradient journey from concrete structures to the intimacy of the human body. As you explore this “box set,” I invite you to reflect on a series of questions: Are buildings machines for living in? Do well-designed spaces make better people? Can space be used incorrectly? What is a city without people? How do people ease their loneliness?