Silja Saarepuu and Villu Plink

Silja Saarepuu (1973) and Villu Plink (1977) have both studied at the art department of Pärnu Sütevaka High School of Humanities, the department of jewellery and blacksmithing at the Estonian Academy of Arts and completed a master’s degree in interdisciplinary arts at the Estonian Academy of Arts. They have been making art together since 2002, presenting stories about the lives of “little people” at the countryside, on Earth and beyond the painting surface through performance art, photography, video and installation. They encourage the observer of their agrarian mythological works to reflect on what would happen to a small country without its little people. Or what would the painting look like without them?

Their little people have been recognised with the Kristjan Raud Prize in 2015 and the second prize of the Tallinn Seventh Applied Arts Triennial in 2017. They have also reached the collection of the Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design, KUMU Art Museum, Tartu Art Museum and Stettin Art Museum. Saarepuu and Plink’s recent duo exhibitions include Litla fólksins at Gallerí Úthverfa, Iceland (2021), Little Monumentalists at the Art House Gallery (with Aet Andresma-Tamm and Mare Soovik-Lobjakas, 2018) and PAINTING / ON EARTH / AT COUNTRYSIDE in Evald Okas Museum (2018).