Kogo Gallery presents: Mari-Leen Kiipli’s video installation One-on-One

The Kogo Gallery offers a one-of-a-kind cultural experience in the festival resting area, where an intense cognitive interruption switches off the turbulent yet frequently distracting fun by means of contemporary art.

Nowadays, the importance of rest is increasingly emphasized in business. Both employees and managers must be able to rest. Many of us actively use our free time to engage in sports.

In the video installation One-on-One, we see two women playing basketball in a dark hall — a sports game that can be quite aggressive, especially when it is about winning. Sportsmen and -women love a good game where discipline, teamwork, solidarity, and the beauty of the game play an important role. But besides all that, competitiveness and winning are also very important.

Such an approach — the desire to be better — can be also applied in business and not necessarily only in the case of competitors. Practicing together with colleagues, setting goals, making plans and analysing conclusions every time after receiving customer feedback illustrates our effort to be better, to be the best.

It is no coincidence that the artist Mari-Leen Kiipli shows (unconventionally) the game between two women. Many women still have difficulties at work due to societal expectations and stereotypes, such as the pay gap or favoring male colleagues in promotions. In recent years, there have been significant changes in western business culture, but despite the progress towards gender equality, women still face setbacks such as discrimination, stereotypes, lack of a professional social network or lack of work-life balance.

In the video work One-on-One, the artist has focused on the unexpected. We see the movement of bodies, physical touches, attacks and defensive tactics — bodily moments of intensity and tension. Everything that is emotional and meaningful but does not make sense to attribute purposefulness or even give a name to. Instead, it is more like a flood and surge, a turbulence — compressed information unleashed with unexpected intensity. A multiplication of perception, assumptions, secondary feelings. Seeing the situation momentarily from different vantage points. It is a fragment of a possible way of being where simultaneous proximity and distancing meet. It is a different temporality — a new territory that needs to be explored.

Mari-Leen Kiipli (b. 1988) is a photo, video and installation artist who focuses mainly on the unarticulated, cognitive qualities of spaces and situations.

She has studied photography at the Estonian Academy of Arts and Art College Pallas, passed exchange studies in Vienna and currently lives and works in Tallinn. Kiipli’s recent solo and duo exhibitions are Nanshe Gone Fishing at Draakon Gallery (2021) as part of Tallinn Photo Month and Husa at Kogo Gallery (2020) together with Paul Kuimet.

Her works have been shown at group exhibitions, screenings and art fairs such as Liste Art Fair in Basel, Switzerland (with Kogo gallery, 2021), Unseen in Amsterdam and Foto Tallinn (with Kogo gallery, 2019), The Others in Turin (with Estonian Photo Artist Association, 2018 ), Estonia Now: Artists’ Moving Image Programme in Glasgow (2018) and Metamorphoses for Home in Tartu Art Museum (2018).

At the Foto Tallinn art fair (2019) the private funding platform Outset awarded her video work Fish that Swallows the Earth. Particles that Dance in the Sunrays with the purchase (the video was prepared for the 2018 Kogo gallery exhibition). In 2018, Mari-Leen received the annual prize of the Estonian Cultural Foundation, and her installation Passiflora won the prize at The Others art fair in Turin.

Supporters

sTARTUp Day, Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Tartu Art Museum, Tartu Art House.

Mari-Leen Kiipli One-on-One, video installation, 2017/2022

Actors: Mary-Ann Talvistu, Maria-Elisabeth Talvistu
Producer: Eret Kuusk
Operator: Taivo Soobard
Operator’s assistant: Jako Krull
Lighting: Kristjan Tenso
Montage: Mari-Leen Kiipli, Artjom Jurov
Colour correction: Jako Krull
Installing: Urmo Teekivi, Peeter Kuul

About Kogo

Kogo Gallery is a contemporary art gallery in Aparaaditehas creative area in Tartu, Estonia, which contributes to the international visibility of artists of the Baltics and a wider introduction of their art practices.

In addition, we offer a professional art rental service for companies. It has been scientifically proven that art helps to improve the work culture, the quality of the work environment, and the mental health of employees, offering an opportunity to increase the productivity of your company. Also, art can help to create and improve a company’s image. Contact us if you want to know more.