Husa

2020, Haapsalu City Gallery; installation made of a set of unbroken car windows, bent armature, concrete, dripping water, second hand jewellery, lace boots, Ensis shells, twining Ipomoea plants, runner beans, raspberries

Lummutiste mõjuala / Phantom affect

2024, part of the exhibition “Enter Woodland Spirits”, Estonian Literary Museum, Tartu 2024; found rebar, sheep wool, tar paper, geotextile, ceramics, hops

On the way from Lilli to Kehra, you can fall under the spell of phantoms. The asphalt road I’m driving on starts to curve, the machine I’m driving slows down, the lines between my body and the body of the car start to blur. I can’t keep this machine on the road. Have the tyres been changed, has the ispection been done, the battery changed, the brake pads? I let myself board at the pulp mill: arm, hand, chest, face, disfigurements and sleights of hand. Where the mill’s chemical waste pipe is leaking, I’ll dig up some hops and henbane.

Kaldapealne sin-u kujuline / Levee shaped like U

2023, Part of the exhibition “Art in the Age of the Anthropocene”, KUMU Art Museum; installation combining plants growing near the Kehra pulp and paper mill with vegetables cultivated on a nearby plot of land, found rebar and concrete, zucchinis, runner beans, noxious weeds, ceramics, dried wood

Levee Shaped Like U builds on her previous works Husa (2020) and Niina Gone Fishing (2021). Combining plants growing near the Kehra pulp and paper mill with vegetables cultivated on a nearby plot of land, the installation highlights the environmental issues associated with industrial production and the ways people have adjusted to living in the neighbourhood of the mill. The artist shows how the intensive water consumption and wastewater of the pulp and paper mill has changed local biotopes. The vegetation is particularly rich near the place where the mill’s wastewater flows into the Jägala River, due to warmth and nutrients. At the same time, we cannot ignore the pollution from the facility, leading to massive killing of fish, most recently in 2009. Other environmental impacts include air pollution and a specific odour. The artist has a personal relationship with the mill: her grandparents moved to Kehra as the mill provided employment. Later they were also given a plot of land near the town, where the family grew zucchini to earn an extra living at the time of economic hardship in the early 1990s after Estonia regained independence. The artist’s family has continued to grow vegetables on this land until today. Is it possible to live with nature and practise gardening in the neighbourhood of a big industrial facility? How should we interpret the notion of “organic” in this context?

Tiiu Saadoja, Ulrike Plath

Sadevee aed /
Rain Garden

2023, ARS Showroom; Flowing outlines resembling a person; found rebar and concrete, dried beet and noxious weeds, ceramics, wood

Until very recently, the river was a resource to exploit: a source of water, astormwater drain and a sewer. Under the 2017 law, Te Awa Tupua in New Zealand was recognized as an indivisible and living whole, comprising the Whanganui River from the mountains to the sea, incorporating all its physical and metaphysical elements. “When we see rivers as living beings that are part of our community then that does actually profoundly change the way we speak about them, the way we make laws about them, the way we make decisions about them.” (Erin O’Donnell, a water law expert at the University of Melbourne)

Granting nature or its parts legal personhood including representational rights in court could succeed where decades of environmental laws have failed. Jägala River, from the waterfall to the estuary belongs to Nature 2000 protection zones. Regardless, the government refuses to close the hydroelectric power plant on the river or stop the Kehra paper factory from polluting the water. If Jägala River had legal rights, it could sue the factory or demand the powerplant to be shut down, it could demand the right to flow.

Niina kalastab lodudel, võrendikel,põikmadalikel / Niina gone fishing

2021, Draakoni Gallery; twining Ipomoea plants, milk thistles, dried sunflowers, zucchini, dried peas, nuts, bamboo fishing rod, stockings, gloves, ceramics, two video projections

I have the feeling that now is the right time to flounder about by the river, struggle in brushwood, lay one’s body into the riverbed, swim by cattails, water lilies, pondweed, on one’s back with ears under water, to listen to the thundering of mud. While fishing in the depths of a quiet river, I am pulling out endless tufts of grass, old boots, shinbones, hollow thoughts, confusing emotions.

Writer Daisy Hildyard has said that we have another body that is as personal and material as the physical body we are aware of. This other body is also a version of ourselves – it extends outside from us, accompanies us on our flights, floats above the factory, enters someone’s lung, flows in the riverbed and rides in a cargo. It is understandably difficult to keep this in mind that we are always connected to this other body, since we are daily present in our primary body; but the fact is that we actually host both bodies. Why are we not touched enough when they speak about global effect? Why does it seem so nonpersonal? Compared to the smallness of our private lives, this scale is unfathomable and our second body is limitless. A closer look at our body shows that it is also conditional in nature – there is always oxygen and atmosphere in our body, and our body moves in atmosphere, similarly we are connected to water and nutrients. While being permeated by matter that is surrounding us everywhere, we form a certain whole with the toxic substances in natural environment, flourishing grass, our body and everyday commodities.

Mari-Leen Kiipli