Kai Kaljo

Estonian painter (born 1959)
Eesti Kaasaegse Kunsti Muuseum; Eesti Kunstimuuseum

trained at Estonian Academy of Arts

Kai Kaljo is primarily known as a video artist, although her work also includes painting, photography, fresco, stained glass, and installation art. Kaljo's themes are inspired by her personal and everyday life extending into existential and social statements. Using black humour and irony, she often questions power relations in the art world, whether they are based on gender (male artists vs female artists), choice of artistic media (traditional art vs new media), geography (Estonia and Eastern Europe vs the international Western art world) or economic status (the precarity of freelance artists). In the 1980s, Kaljo studied monumental painting, and in the 1990s she found herself in a new society, where state art commissions had suddenly disappeared and the art field of newly independent Estonia saw the emergence of new media. Her first notable moment of recognition came in 1994 with her site specific installation “Genesis and Disappearance of Life” at the 2nd Annual Exhibition of the Soros Center of Contemporary Arts, Estonia “Unexistent Art”. Kaljo became known internationally in 1997 when she presented her first video “Loser” at the exhibition “Funny versus Bizarre” at the Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius. The work was soon exhibited at other international shows as well. In the video, using laconic irony, Kaljo describes her lived reality as an Estonian woman artist – so far from the success stories heralded as part of the official cultural politics. She has addressed the precarious situation of artists in her later work, for example, in the photo installation “The more I work the poorer I am” (2006), depicting scenes from the artist's work days during which she makes a loss of € 246. The art historian Mari Laaniste has described Kai Kaljo's work as “a sceptical meditation bordering on self-deprecation”. In the video “I am no Adamson-Eric” (2018) she plays with the idea of who is allowed to participate in the community of art (history). Kaljo tells the story of a conversation she had with her mother: when she was younger, she asked her mother, why she could not become an artist as multifaceted as the famous Estonian artist Adamson-Eric. Her mother snapped back at her: “But you are no Adamson-Eric!” In the video “Even the name is sometimes the same” (2017), also shown in Paris and Berlin at the Rencontres Internationales festival, Kaljo contemplates the randomness of human life, as she searches for figures who often remain in the background in historic photographs.

Browse 3 works in the catalogue →

Also trained at Estonian Academy of Arts: Eduard Wiiralt · Evald Okas · Andrus Johani · Johann Naha · Jüri Arrak

Contemporaries in Eesti Kunstimuuseum: Alice Kask · Andrus Joonas · Sandra Jõgeva · Fiona Sheppard · Ojars Feldbergs

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Data from MuIS and the EKM Digital Collection. Full catalogue