The main programme of the international contemporary art biennial Tallinn Photomonth 2025 will open on September 5 at the Saarinen House with Tanja Muravskaja’s exhibition Gardens: Tanja Muravskaja and Light. From October 11, Sirje Runge’s exhibition On Fragile Grounds. Sirje Runge and Light will be on view at the Kai Art Center. The exhibitions offer two different perspectives on light and perception.
Tanja Muravskaja’s photo series Gardens explores the lines between reality and image, while using water as a means of looking. The sea is not seen here as a mere motif – as it is – but instead the artist transmutes its form, whereas the visible is shaped by light and time. Thus, water ceases to be an illustration and becomes an experience that is both material and visual, interfering with the viewer’s memory, time, and internal states.
Muravskaja considers the use of water a conscious strategy for slowing down, as well as a counterpoint to the automated visual flows of the digital age. “With my works, I invite the viewers to pause for a moment and refocus their gaze – to turn away from the endless stream of news and images in order to restore sensitivity to light and time, and to notice how the image is formed in the here and the now. It is a journey to the grey areas between the visible and the invisible, bringing the viewer back to a heightened physical presence,” said the artist Tanja Muravskaja.
The exhibition will take place in the historic Saarinen House and will showcase a photo series printed by the artist herself in 2024–2025, the final selection and presentation of which will be designed especially for the Tallinn Photomonth exhibition. “Displayed in the exhibition space, the photographs form a spatial rhythm, creating an engaging environment where the viewers find themselves in the liminal space between the recognizable and the formless,” added Muravskaja. The exhibition is designed by the artist Jevgeni Zolotko and the exhibition consultant is art historian Elnara Taidre.
In addition to Tanja Muravskaja’s solo exhibition, the Tallinn Photomonth’s main programme also features Sirje Runge’s solo exhibition On Fragile Grounds. Sirje Runge and Light at the Kai Art Center. The exhibition will be on view from October 11 and is curated by Mėta Valiušaitytė (FR/LT).
The exhibition traces Runge’s engagement with light, colour and perception. Best known for her paintings, Runge has worked across media including painting, video, and decades of teaching. Central to her practice is the concept of värviruum, or color space: a living field where light, emotion, and structure interact. For Runge, teaching and making are fundamentally intertwined. Teaching being an art form of its own, grounded in attention and experimentation. Light, too, is not only a material phenomenon, but her greatest collaborator.
Placing fragility at the centre of her works, both conceptually and materially, the exhibition invites viewers to inhabit the liminal space of matter and thought, light and shadow, creation and dissolution. Runge reminds us that the force of art often lies in its ability to hold contradictions, embrace impermanence, and transmute the fleeting into something enduring.
The exhibition will present a selection of Runge’s works ranging from the 1970s to the present day. It will also feature a room dedicated to Runge’s teachings, reconstructing her experimental work with coloured papers into explorations with light.
The international contemporary art biennial Tallinn Photomonth will take place for the eighth time this year, from September 5 to October 31. More information about the programme will be available in August. Tallinn Photomonth is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia and the City of Tallinn. The main organizer of the biennial is the Estonian Union of Photography Artists (FOKU).