“This is my first exhibition in Estonia,” Krista Dzudzilo tells me at the opening of her new exhibition “all the possibilities that existed” – “and I really like it.”
Dzudzilo works in a variety of different media and on a range of scales – from small, meticulously made drawings to large-scale stage designs for collaborations in theater and opera. Divided into four different sections, “all the possibilities that existed” demonstrates this versatility while inviting viewers to seek ways to turn observation into awareness.
“I really like the space,” she says, speaking about the Kogo Gallery, where her exhibition is on display – “the shoebox principle or the tunnel where everything moves like a straight line.” It’s the particular characteristics of that space that Dzudzilo says invited her to “concentrate the gaze of the spectator” on the video installation called “this is where she is.”
It’s about rushing forward while also staying in the same place and is one of the many “different contradictions and the tension that arises between polar opposites” Dzudzilo explores through her work.
However, if there is one constant theme, both in the artworks themselves, and the way Dzudzilo describes them, then surely, it’s music. “I am completely in love with classical music,” she tells me afterwards. “I am completely convinced that music is the ultimate art form, and it gives me the most emotions that I cannot reach by looking at visual art.”
That love is especially evident in the series of drawings, collectively entitled “let your words be mine,” each of which Dzudzilo chose to name after a different classical composition.
It “somehow transports me to the place or to the sound that I was in while I was drawing. I also like the fact that I am encouraging people to try to listen to the music or to try something that I love. And if it doesn’t work, it’s fine,” she smiles, “then it’s just some beautiful numbers or beautiful letters underneath the drawing.”
Music is a constant inspiration, Dzudzilo says, and it is while attending classical concerts that she often comes up with new ideas. “Somehow, I feel really inspired and very free when I listen to classical music and so, the first drawings (in “let your words be mine”) came exactly like this,” she says.
The drawings themselves however took far longer to create than the duration of a single classical piece. When introducing them at the gallery opening,” Dzudzilo explained that she spent around 100 hours perfecting each work.
“For some it was even more,” she tells me afterwards. “The first drawing was roughly 60 hours, then the next one was 100, 130 and now I’m somewhere in the middle.” To put that in context, “It’s really slow, because those (drawings) are maybe five square centimeters (in size). But I feel that (the time is) going super-fast and super good and then my partner comes and he says ‘oh, there’s not much done yet,'” she laughs.
But, Dzudzilo explains, when she’s truly immersed in a drawing, it feels like time is moving differently somehow. It’s not uncommon for her to lose track of just how long she’s been working on one piece.
“I’m definitely an overthinker, sometimes not in a healthy way,” she tells me. “I like labyrinths in my mind, with words and ideas. But drawing is the place where I think that after a couple of hours, my mind stays still or is in complete calmness and only my body works. Only my hand works. I don’t really think, I don’t think about what I am drawing. I just draw lines and they appear in a certain way that it creates an image.”
But even when she’s able to achieve that state of calm, where all that matters is the art she’s working on in front of her, Dzudzilo still feels the need to suffer for her creations.
“I like challenges,” she says. “Maybe it is connected with our background or history. We had to earn everything that we are, like this working class that had to earn freedom, their space, their everything. Maybe it’s some kind of a trauma that is transformed, that art is so free.”
“I can do what I like, I do what I love, but I still have to work really hard.” And that’s especially the case when she’s working with charcoal, as she did for “everything you say is true,” her series of much larger drawings “located halfway between sculpture and painting.”
“[Charcoal] is like sandpaper. So, it is really hard for my hands and sometimes they are just bleeding. Then of course, I’m frustrated but at the same time, I somehow like it.”
So, when you complete something, even though your fingers are bleeding, is that a good feeling?
“Yes, of course. But it’s also somehow sad as well, because then I am completely disconnected from the work. It is mine at the point when I am creating it,” she says. “The work needs me for it to appear. It won’t appear without me. But when it’s done, it’s like it says: ‘Thank you, I’m off then.’ And then it is a little bit sad because I don’t feel the connection with the work anymore.”
As our conversation comes to an end, we look back into the Kogo Gallery at Dzudzilo’s work, which, by coming here to Estonia has, in a way done the exact thing she’s just described. The “sonic unit” of metronomes and pencils on the gallery floor, which she calls “all the possibilities that existed” overlap “back and forth, each in a somewhat different rhythm, streaking the air in order to achieve,” in Dzudzilo’s words, “nothing at all.”
“I like this place, it’s beautifully organized in a laid-back casual way,” she says when I ask how Tartu compares to her home city of Riga. “There are differences, but it is a nice difference, like a familiar otherness,” she smiles. “I really like this place.”
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Krista Dzudzilo’s exhibition “all the possibilities that existed” opened on March 28 at Tartu’s Kogo Gallery and will remain on display until May 4.
More information is available here.
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