Estonia will be represented at the Venice Art Biennale next year by sculptor Edith Karlson, who will organize clay portrait workshops for this purpose, with which she hopes to create self-portraits of 150 Estonians.
“I originally thought I would do the portraits myself, but after doing five pieces, I realized it would be extremely boring for me and ultimately for others,” Karlson revealed.
Karlson then began inviting people from among his closest acquaintances who had never touched clay before and asked them to make portraits. “It took on bigger and bigger dimensions and I saw what it did to people. At first everyone arrived uncertainly, awkwardly, and in the end the results were always entrancing both for the authors and for me above all,” said the artist.
For Karlson it all started with the terracotta portraits in the church of St. John in Tartu. “Thousands of them were made there and they are all personalities,” she said.
According to Karlson, even in the absence of expertise, the author’s essence and mood are recorded in self-portraits. “Every portrait is worth its weight in gold to me,” she remarked. “People are still skilled beyond belief. They probably don’t know that this sense of form is actually present in every person.”
Karlson takes his participation in the Biennale in stride. “I understand that this is a great opportunity for me and I will still try to make the most of it because this is where you have to do it,” she said. “It’s like that for every project, really, no matter if it’s the Venice Biennale or something else,” she said.
2023-12-14 19:03:00
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