Liste Year
Year of Birth
Country of Birth
Presented by
2023
1993
Estonia
Kogo
Anna Mari Liivrand (born in 1993) is an installation artist who also works with drawing. She is a sensitive creator interested in the conventional use of everyday materials and related unconscious judgements. Using poetic language, Liivrand explores evanescence and melancholy in today’s society. In recent years, Liivrand has focused on everyday rituals, ornaments and decoration. She often examines them from the point of self-creation and how they act as anchor points in an ever-changing world filled with uncertainties and anxieties. Her works are combinations of unusual materials (i.e. pieces of her skin, vitamins) and traditional craft practices, which come together in elegant spatial installations.
Anna Mari Liivrand graduated from the sculpture and installation department (BA, 2016) and contemporary art (MA, 2022) at the Estonian Academy of Arts and has also studied fine arts at the Iceland University of Arts. In 2014, Liivrand received the Young Sculptor Prize. In addition to solo exhibitions, she has participated in numerous group shows, including the 7th Artishok Biennale. She was the recipient of the Eduard Wiiralt Prize in 2020 and received the Estonian Cultural Endowment’s annual award in 2021.
Whispers of Unfurling Tears
Works for Liste Art Fair Basel 2023
At Liste Art Fair Basel 2023, Kogo Gallery will present Estonian artist Anna Mari Liivrand with her solo stand Whispers of Unfurling Tears. Using poetic language and her own system of symbols, Liivrand explores evanescence and melancholy in today’s society. As a rather decadent person, she is interested in different emotional experiences, undercurrents in the space like the breeze or sweet smells, impermanence, traces of time and overlaps of cultural history. Recently, Liivrand has been occupied with gloomy feelings of anxiety. As a result, she has created new works that resemble metal cut altarpieces combined with delicate drawings, ornaments and ready-made objects. Keeping the aesthetic and form she recently found, Liivrand’s interest has shifted towards the movement of change, the slow but unstoppable process of rebirth.
As the symbol of rebirth, the artist has chosen a tadpole. It forms from a frog’s egg but has yet to develop into a frog – an amphibian that can partly live in the water and partly on the ground. In Western history, it has been perceived as a mysterious creature, a symbol of uncertainty. Change means instability and doubt as rebirth goes hand in hand with entropy turning old lives and worlds into ruins for the new life to start. Relying on aesthetics, iconography, decor and storytelling elements forming various visual histories and craft practices, Liivrand will exhibit a group of installative sculptures inlaid with drawings, stained glass and organic matter. Together they will form a surrealistic landscape depicting the birth of a new, unknown life form among the ruins of the old.
More works from Whispers of Unfurling Tears
Prick of a Daisy and other exhibitions
Press and Publications
Anna Mari Liivrand and the alternative patterns of rituality. Elnara Taidre examines the work of Anna Mari Liivrand. Magazine of Art and Visual Culture KUNST.EE, 2/2022.
Prick of a Daisy. Anna Mari Liivrand. Ofluxo, 18.10.2021
Anna Mari Liivrand. PRICK OF A DAISY. Kuba Paris, 14.10.2021
Kogo is a contemporary art gallery in Tartu, Estonia, founded in 2018. The gallery focuses on the younger generation of artists, currently representing eight artists from the Baltic countries.
The gallery's recent and upcoming presence in international art fairs includes Art Brussels (2023), Liste Art Fair Basel (2021, 2022, 2023), viennacontemporary (2023), Around Video Art Fair (2022) and others.
Kogo Gallery is committed to encouraging dialogue on important issues of today by running an extensive public programme alongside the exhibitions.