Catalogue > At random

The video is an artist’s momentary personal reaction on the events of August 2022, which took place in Estonia, in Narva, Maria’s home town. Since the war in Ukraine escalated, the removal of Soviet monuments in Estonia became intensively debated topic followed by the government’s decision to demolish any Soviet attributes and monuments from the public spaces. The tank monument in Narva became a stumbling block between the views of different communities within the country. It has especially became symbolic and problematic because it stood right at the border with Russia, on a riverbank of Narva river, facing Estonia. In the final scene the artist stands on that riverbank facing Russia. As Kapajeva grew up on that border, she felt an urge to speak up about the situation with the monument. As the artist states, the video helped her not just to scream out everything what accumulated for the first half a year of the war, but, also, it helped her to regain meaningfulness in her own art practice that she lost since the full invasion of Ukraine by Russia.

Born in the Soviet Union, raised in an independent Estonia and educated in the UK, Maria Kapajeva has found herself in an involuntary position of ‘the other’ everywhere. A position, she has embraced and employs as datum in her artistic practice, leads her to explore a diverse spectrum of cultural identity and gender issues within historical and contemporary contexts. Being originally from a borderland region, border within postcolonial and post-Soviet geopolitical conditions becomes to be the core in her work. She uses various mediums, such as video, photography, textile and installations, to bring to the focus what is often left invisible or stays in peripheral vision. Kapajeva’s works exhibit internationally including some of the solo exhibitions at Estonian National Archive (2013), Estonian Museum of Art KUMU (2022), Finnish Museum of Photography (2021), Lithuanian Gallery of Photography (2020) and Tallinn Art Hall (2020). Her video works were screened at various venues and festivals including Art Viewer (2023, Spain), VAFT: Visual Art Festival (2020, Finland), Luminocity Video Art Festival (2018, Canada), Berlin Feminist Film Week (2017, Germany) and others. Her video work ‘Test Shooting’ received Runner-Up Award at FOKUS Video Art festival (2018, Denmark). Kapajeva is a member of Estonian Artists’ Association.