Estonian outsider art

Estonia 100 - Estonian outsider art project is focused on works of art created by Estonian people with mental special needs. 

It is a socially oriented art project which aims to map Estonian outsider art – discover untamed artistic expression, meet the creators and exhibit their creative work to the wider public. The project promoter Kondas Centre has tried, through the Estonian welfare service system – in care homes, support and daycare centres and schools for children with special needs – to reach people with mental special needs, whose unique and often hidden artistic creation is worth presenting to a wider audience.

The exhibition shows about 240 works of art by more than 50 artists.

The exhibition of Estonian outsider art opens up the creators’ unique worlds that fall into larger thematic categories, like “Festive Estonia”, “Visions”, “People”, “”Everyday Life and Buildings, Machines and Warriors”, “Plant and Animal Kingdom”, and “Patterns and Colours, Letters and Repetitions”. These topics cover a large part of outsider art, and express the spiritual world of people with special needs. Yet the aim of this exhibition is not to demonstrate marginality but rather to interpret the fundamental issues of art – authenticity, originality, creativity and the artist’s position.

Outsider art with its ambiguous boundaries continues to attract the attention of both the public and the artists. Since the 1960–70s, mainstream art has powerfully engaged the “outsiders” of the art world, involving their art in large-scale museum and exhibition projects (incl. for example Kassel Documenta, the Venice Biennale), so that it is represented in the permanent exhibition of some modern art museums, not to mention the general increase in the number of institutions that deal with outsider art.

The Kondas Centre is grateful to the welfare institutions of Estonia for pleasant collaboration; and to the creators and their support persons and guardians for the possibility and permission to publicly display the works.

Mari Vallikivi