Piret Mildeberg "Burrow"

22.02. - 01.05.2022

Piret Mildeberg BURROW or When I’m 64

This is a highly subjective exhibition speaking of time.

In 1967, four about 25-year-old young men in England sang the song “When I’m Sixty-Four”.

Will you still need me,

Will you still feed me

When I’m sixty-four.

And, humming along with the song, a 10-year-old girl in Estonia thought that that age was millions of light years away from her. Yet even light years fly by (at the speed of light), and today, on 22 February 2022, I find myself aged 64.

Looking back on past times, I put up 29 self-portraits from the years 1974–2020, humming another song sung by other young men from England in 1976,

“Too old to rock ’n’ roll, too young to die” (especially the encouraging last lines of the song).

The BURROW (“URG”) in the rear hall is a conceptual conclusion to my exhibition SLEEP (“UNI”), which was opened in Sammas Gallery on 20 February 2002.

A seasoned, 64-year-old white countrywoman hides safely in the burrow when the weather is poor, and she does not return until the weather is fine again.

The world.

In my mind, I am grateful to three young American women artists of the late 1960s, from whom I have taken the courage to be MYSELF: Yayoi Kusama (1929), Niki de Saint Phalle (1930–2002) and Yoko Ono (1933), whose artwork I saw at their exhibitions in Helsinki.

And many thanks to our own Vanda Juhansoo (1889–1966), in whose garden I saw a MIRACLE in the summer of 1965.