art exhibition

This exhibition seeks to explore imaginative connections between literature and other artistic forms, highlighting the way in which different media can shape, inspire, and transform physical spaces. 

We are constantly surrounded by many different media – photographs, books, digital images and digital narratives, movies, illustrations – and we are always interacting with them: we navigate a multimedia world on a daily basis. We also often transform these media, reshaping them in our minds, and imagining for instance how we would live in the world of a movie. When this transformation becomes an artwork itself, it is a process of transmediation. This exhibition is dedicated to exploring the rich and powerful phenomenon of transmediation, focusing on the transformation of literary places. The exhibition shows experimental pieces in which the dialogue between literature and other media is explored through the blending of different forms of reality, the cooperation of human creativity and artificial intelligence, and the interaction between humans and computers. 

Geographical locations born in literary works are re-interpreted, migrating into the form of expression of another medium. With paintings, videos, music, interactive experiences, virtual and augmented reality, and mixed-media installations, international artists from different backgrounds creatively adapt a chosen literary place. Whether they represent a misty landscape from Jane Eyre, the dangerous forest of Little Red Riding Hood, the dystopian world of George Orwell’s 1984, or a dream-like Tartu inspired by Meelis Friedenthal’s Mesilased, the exhibited artworks capture in different ways the essence and contemporary meaning of multiple literary places in unique ways. 

The exhibition features 31 artworks realised in different media, all revolving around the theme of the reinterpretation of places born in literature. The displayed artistic pieces include virtual and augmented reality pieces, interactive and adaptive installations, video works, music, illustrations and paintings both physically and digitally made. The participating artists come from 18 different countries all over the world, from Canada to Australia. Over 30 literary works are re-adapted by the artists, from epic Germanic poems to contemporary Estonian novels, including writings of Jeoffrey Chaucer, the Grimm Brothers, Lewis Carroll, Italo Calvino, George Orwell, and Charlotte Brontë.

This multimedia exhibition celebrates and explores both the propelling power of literary sources and the fascinating metamorphoses the encounter of different media can produce. During and after your visit you are invited to write a creative text inspired by the exhibition and its beautiful artworks. A selection of these pieces will be published in a compendium that will show once more the synergy between arts and literature.

"Transforming Literary Places" is part of the cultural programme of Tartu 2024 European Capital of Culture. It also features as part of the Literary Festival Prima Vista 2024 “Futures Better and Worse”, and in the social program of the International Conference of the Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA). 

The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia and by the Institute of Cultural Research of the University of Tartu.