Through a collaboration between BAC and the local daily, Gotlands Allehanda, the drawing series The Fears of Gotland by Flo Kasearu will published in the newspaper during May.
The Fears of Gotland
During three workshops arranged by BAC on Gotland March 14 th -16th, the Estonian artist Flo Kasearu had planned to find out more about the fears of Gotland by mapping them in a series of drawings. Since 2013 the artist has mapped and visualised the fears and nightmare scenarios of different groups. Lack of knowledge gives birth to speculations and the imagining of all kinds of possible events. The question is how far to let one’s paranoias soar? Mapping the fears on paper is like art therapy: if you deal with your fears and share them with others they will most likely seem smaller.
The artist managed to carry out one out of three planned workshops before the restrictions caused by the Corona pandemic put a stop to the project. Instead of gathering with the groups on Gotland the artist sent out a survey to all of the people scheduled to participate. The artist then finished the drawings back home in Tallinn, which also resulted in Gotland being portrayed from the east rather than from the usual mainland perspective. Although all the drawings depart from the fears discussed by resident Gotlanders participating in the project.
Estonian Flo Kasearu is the first artist in the AIR_BALTIC II residency programme at BAC and began her project with a research visit to Gotland in February 2019.
Flo Kasearu was born in 1985 in the Soviet Union but grew up in Estonia. With performance, photo, drawings and sculpture the artists engages with issues of her own history and the makings of identity. Since 2013 she is the director of the Flo Kasearu House Museum located in Tallinn, in the repossessed house built by her family before the Soviet occupation. The Flo Kasearu House Museum is a place where the artist’s family history is mirrored by Estonian history and where the artist herself and invited colleagues presents new works in the house, its gardens and in the surrounding neighbourhood.
The AIR_BALTIC II residency is a platform for artistic practices exploring how social, historical and political narratives can take physical shape in nature, built environments, institutions and contemporary memory culture in the Baltic Sea region - also outside of Gotland. The residency invites two artists from the Nordic and Baltic countries in 2019-20, to encourage reflective thinking on the underpinnings of “place” in the Baltic Sea region.
