Sandra Ernits & Tõnis Jürgens

The Flesh Falls from the Bone

2025

The sequence of rooms here isn’t strictly linear. Emotional tones, levels of representation and narration, and the relationships between works all shift at once. In the second room, Sandra has erected a fragile pavilion that wobbles and trembles at the slightest touch. Hanging from it are photographs printed on sheet metal – images of her at home, wearing the same handmade armour that sprouts shoots on the rooftop in the first room. The photos, taken by Tõnis, have been abstracted through Sandra’s printing techniques and surface treatments. I have often thought that happiness is something we build primarily from within. The same goes for strength. Everything that moves, wears down. Our task is to care – and to resist. In the grand scheme of things, even “real” houses and protective gear are little more than cardboard and plastic.

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave tells of people who spend their entire lives chained inside a cave, unable to see one another or the world around them. All they can do is stare at the wall in front of them, where shadows of passing objects flicker, cast by a fire behind. With this, Plato draws a distinction between two worlds: the true world, or the realm of ideas, and the apparent world, or the realm of objects, where things and beings continually emerge and disappear. The human condition, he suggests, is to sense but never fully grasp. The shifting figures on the cave wall are often seen as one of the earliest depictions of projection. At the same time, the allegory resonates deeply with today’s spectacle-driven society. Tõnis, who also works as a projectionist, has turned his gaze away from the cave wall – and aimed the camera directly into the fire.