Wednesday December 13, 7pm

Screening of Moi aussi, je regarde (23′) and Roosenberg (29′), two documentary films by Ingel Vaikla, followed by a talk in English between the artist and Merilin Talumaa, curator of the exhibition Breathing through the eyes (visble until December 22).

Moi aussi, je regarde is an experimental documentary film which portrays widely reproduced building unité d’habitation in Marseille by Atelier Le Corbusier through the stories of its female inhabitants. The film attempts to give the building its own agency to not only be looked at but to be empowered to look back in the masculine world of modernity.

Roosenberg is a place, a space, a building, a film. Roosenberg is Amanda, Godelieve, Rosa and Trees. Roosenberg is a letter that tells of an encounter with the core community of Marian Sisters of St. Francis in a modernist monastery in Belgium. The everyday communal life of the sisters, their religious practice, connection with the space and final departure are captured, in order to tell a story of a building at the beginning of the end.

Ingel Vaikla (1992, Tallinn) is a visual artist and a filmmaker based in Brussels working primarily with video, 16 mm analogue film and found footage. Vaikla’s artistic practice focuses on representation of architecture and on the relationship between the space and its communities. She is on a constant search for visual language that would not simply observe architecture as a sculptural form but would translate the existential, conceptual and ideological qualities spaces manifest. Her works The House Guard, Roosenberg, Double Exposure, Papagalo, What’s the Time?, EUR42  have been screened internationally at film festivals and art institutions such as IDFA in Amsterdam, Kunsthalle Wien, EKKM in Tallinn, Beursschouwburg and Bozar in Brussels, Manifesta 13 in Marseille, Videonale in Bonn, Tramway in Glasgow, EMAF in Osnabrück and Busan International Video Art Festival.

Merilin Talumaa (1986, Tallinn ) is a curator, art historian and cultural manager from Estonia, currently living in Paris. She has graduated from the Department of Art History and Visual Culture at the Estonian Academy of Arts, and in Environmental Studies from University of Tartu. Her practice has evolved around research about artists’ studio and work environments, as well as notions of migration and belonging. She’s the co-founder of Roots to Routes (since 2020). Prior to the book Your Time Is My Time (Mousse Publishing, 2023),published during her residency at Cité Internationale des Arts, she compiled and edited the book Artists’ spaces : 16 studio visits (Estonian Academy of Arts Press, 2017).

The exhibition is freely accessed until December 22 2023, from Tuesday to Saturday, 12 to 7pm, and until January 3 2024 by appointment.