Have you ever thought of making a museum out of your own house or apartment? I have once, but when the war started, I had to flee. However, upon arrival in Estonia, I found out that the idea of a house museum has been embodied here by a well-known artist, Flo Kasearu.

I learned about the artist in a rather unusual way. In the house where I temporarily settled immediately after emigrating, I saw a postcard with a photograph of Flo's work "Estonian Sculpture". In it, the artist stands in an Estonian national costume on a kind of pedestal with a sheet of paper in her hands where it is written in Estonian "Ma olen surnud", which means "I am dead." I was immediately impressed by this work and wanted to get to know the artist who had so boldly broken the biggest social taboo by embracing the concept of being dead.

At that time, this idea was in tune with my feelings: emigration for me was like dying. But what did the author of this performance, dressed in an Estonian folk costume, want to say? I decided to find it out first-hand. This opportunity presented itself to me only a year and a half later, when one morning I was invited to the Flo Kasearu House Museum.

Flo Kasearu House Museum was founded on April 24, 2013. But the house has a long and complicated history, which is told on the small posters on the first floor near the entrance. From them, we can learn that this wooden building was constructed between 1908 and 1911. On the first floor there used to be a store run by Flo's great-grandparents. The couple lived in one of the apartments but had to rent out the other six in order to pay back the bank loan taken to build the house. Flo's great-grandmother Marta got married for the second time to a former war prisoner, Vagan Sultanjan.

After the Second World War, when Estonia became a part of the Soviet Union, the house was nationalized by the new state. The couple fled the house to hide in the countryside for a year as they feared that they might be considered as bourgeoisie and deported to work camps of Siberia. While they were absent, the house was filled with new inhabitants because of the post-war accommodation shortage.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Flo's great-grandmother Marta Sultanjan claimed the house back. After Marta's death, the process of the restitution was taken over by other family members. It was only in 2009 that the city was ready to hand the property over, but when Flo and her mother came to check the house, they found out that it was empty and vandalized. It turned out that nobody had told the owners that the so-called sitting tenants had moved out to municipal housing provided by the city. It took four years to fix the house and prepare it for the museum opening.

This museum, which can rightfully be called the artist's queendom, comprises not only the house of the owner, but also the area around, a backyard which also contains an important part of the exhibition. Flo Kasearu House Museum is not a frozen, conserved place, but rather a space for constant performance: life is in full swing here, and as the artist implements her new projects the exhibition reflects the changes.

It happened so that Flo gave me an interview along with a tour of her house and the area around it. First, we walked around the block. Flo was pushing the pram with her baby and answering my questions.

I noticed that there was a crown symbol on many house decor items, and I wondered what it meant.

Jerry Mercury: What does this crown symbolize? I can see it everywhere.

Flo Kasearu: This is the museum logo. We can go to the opposite side of the street and you will see that the house itself is actually shaped somewhat like a crown, and so is the chimney. And most importantly, I play to be the queen of the house, that's why the crown is the logo of the museum.

So, let's talk about that artwork of yours, where you are standing in the Estonian national costume with this note "Ma olen surnud". How did you come up with this idea and what did you have in mind?

I was quite young when I created this performance "Estonian Sculpture", and to my surprise, this work got much more attention and levels of interpretation than I first expected. First, the idea grew from my feeling that there was nothing exciting happening with the contemporary sculpture in Estonia. So, being an art student, by performing this living sculpture I was pointing out that Estonian sculpture was dead. 

Another level of the interpretation of this work is the nationality issue, although it was not at all the main thing that I aimed to address at that time. But other people understood it as a symbol of the ongoing process of blurring national differences and so on… And then I thought – aha, not bad, because it was also something actually happening in the world. 

So, after that, I've created more works on this nationality issue. It was also because later I spent almost a year in Berlin as an Erasmus student, and that's when this nationality question arose. And I have been dealing with it in one way or another. Through potatoes, for example…

Through potatoes? Could you elaborate, please?

A few years ago, when Estonia celebrated its 100th anniversary I was invited to take part in the exhibition "State is not the work of art", curated by Katerina Gregos, which took place in the Art Hall. By that time, I was so tired of these flag colors and the national costume colors, that I thought: hm, let's find some other symbols…  And then it dawned on me: potatoes! You know, we used to be considered a potato republic in the Soviet Union, because lots of potatoes were grown here. So, I thought that potatoes would be something interesting, because, they are actually a kind of immigrants since they were introduced only in the 18th century. But now just over two hundred years later we all think: hm, potatoes are our national dish. So, there's this funny contradiction, that over time these immigrant potatoes have actually become our national pride.  And I kind of like this change that time has been able to make to potatoes. I thought that our immigration policy historically has been kind of xenophobic: there are all these laws and regulations because they don't want to let so many people in. But I wanted to show that with time all those immigrants become our pride.

And how did you implement this idea about potatoes in your art?

First, I created a drawing collage series, about thirty drawings, and then the table decorations. I can show them to you in the picture because it is difficult to explain.

Let's return to your Estonian Sculpture performance.  What was your experience like?

In the Art Hall, there was this exhibition called "Living Sculptures", curated by Anders Härm. It was an open call where people could apply with their ideas. It was designed as a one-day show of six-hour duration, and the title "Living performance" implied that you could make your body a part of an artistic action. This also explains why the exhibition was limited to only one day. So, I applied this idea to stand on this high podium in the national costume. It was interesting to stand there high and you look directly into the lamps. And I didn't see what was happening below, as I was trying to be as still as possible, like a sculpture. And then this image appeared on a magazine cover. 

How did it happen that you chose sculpture as an art medium? Was this your major when you were studying?

Well, originally, I studied painting in the Art Academy in Tallinn (EKA). And then I stayed in Berlin, as an Erasmus student, for one year during my BA studies, and later I went to Istanbul to do an Erasmus internship. In Berlin, I worked in Rebecca Horn's studio. She is a very famous artist in the field of performance and sculpture. She told me: "I don't know anything about painting. I don't paint. Do something else". So, I shifted away from painting and started to do other things: more videos in the city and kind of performative things, and later also sculptural things. 

We finish our walk and enter the house. On the first floor, where the exhibition space begins, I can see the table with hot tea prepared in advance for visitors. Flo Kasearu kindly offers me a cup of tea. The space looks somewhat like a corridor, with doors on each side that lead to the residential apartments of the museum building. Flo takes her child to her own apartment on the second floor and upon her return, we continue the conversation.

How many apartments are there in this house?

Originally, eight. Here – four, and upstairs – also four. My apartment is made of the two. When I came to live here these apartments had already been connected, because in old times people used to live in vast, twenty-five square meters apartments. Four generations would live together, while now everybody needs much more space.

Who are the housemates living here?

These are different people. Mostly they are also an art crowd. (Flo points to different doors in the house). Here is a glass artist, here is a DJ, a product designer there, there is an animation artist. So, yeah.

Is it ok for them that so many strangers come to visit this house?

Otherwise, they wouldn't live here. 

Flo Kasearu shows me a door in which the resident of one of the apartments deliberately made a peephole from the side of the corridor so that museum visitors could look through it at what is going on inside the premises. Thereby this apartment has become a part of the museum exhibition. I admit, in my entire life I have never seen anything of this kind.

Another thing that immediately catches my eye is the aluminum slide, built over the wooden steps of an old staircase with railings. It's called "ARS LONGA VITA BREVIS" ("ART IS LONG, LIFE IS SHORT") The currently functioning staircase, leading to the second floor, is located a little further away.

What's the idea behind this slide?

Actually, there are two 100-year-old staircases in this house. And of course, people tended to use mostly this staircase, because it's closer to the front door. And as its steps are made of wood, they are quite worn out. And since I run the museum, I need to take care of things, and that's why I decided to build this slide over the steps – to preserve them for another one hundred years. People can slide down just for fun or in case of a fire emergency.

Has anybody got injured while sliding down?

Some people hurt their bottoms. They say "I am ok", but actually their bottom can hurt the next few days. The name of the exhibit implies that art can have a lasting follow-up effect – you may get bruises. Nothing too serious. (We laugh).

I know that this house has been vandalized. How did it happen?

So, first, it happened before my arrival. When I came here in 2009 there was no electricity, no heating, no water, because the house had been vandalized by metal thieves, and robbed completely. Now the area is gentrified but back then it wasn't. Thieves and ex-prisoners lived in the house opposite. So, they of course noticed that the house was empty, and they came and took everything. And then it happened one more time when I went on an Erasmus internship to Istanbul, and as I was away for quite a while, my technical director was often coming and checking this place out, but still, somebody came and took a drill machine. And if you ask about vandalism, there was one more case, but for me to tell this story we need to go out.

We are entering the backyard through the back door.

Actually, this question about vandalism appeals to me. No interviewer has asked me about it so far, but for me it's interesting. We need to go there. Be careful, it's slippery. These are also my sculptures. (Flo Kasearu points to a wooden construction in the backyard with many copies of her sculpted head). And these two used to be on the top of the woodshed up there. (The artist points in the opposite direction, where behind a glass display case there are similar damaged head sculptures). Some children climbed up the roof of the neighboring house and pushed their heads off. So, these are my vandalized sculptures. I found them lying down on the grass. And this is how they were broken. So, I am now exhibiting them behind this glass and what's the title? The artwork is called "The vandalized monument of the living artist".

Why do you chop the noses off?

Actually, I don't say that I chop them off, but instead, I say that you know, these heads are so antique. These have been always the most fragile things in sculpted figures: fingers, genitals, and noses. That's why they are usually the first to collapse, and you can see that in ancient sculptures. 

We are approaching a corner where I can see some equestrian sculptures.

Wow! There's a blue horse and a white horse. Could you please tell me the story behind them?

The blue horse is from my "Disorder Patrol" performance, where all the costumes were navy blue. Many things from different exhibitions – they end up here. Mostly, I keep them in the attic, but also, in the garden. As for the horses – it's good to have them outside. And now let's come closer. Have a look: this horse has a… bronze mini-monument on its hip. Which is a tick.  It's from my recent series that I made together with a Latvian artist Elina Vitola. The point is that in summertime the news is full of stories about ticks: ticks can carry Lyme disease; they are killing people. So, they are very dangerous insects. As for this bronze monument, we cast it from one of the real ticks, that were collected from my mother's dog. This one is huge. It's already fully sucked. And we cast a hundred ticks. They were displayed at Kadriorg Museum last summer. Now they have been just exhibited in London.  And soon there will be some shows in Tartu, and the ticks are also going there because Tartu is going to be the cultural capital…

Of ticks?

(We laugh).

European capital of culture 2024... As for these white horses (Flo Kasearu points at the white horses' sculptures) – they are the models of the sculptures for the exhibition in the Vabamu Museum of Occupation and Freedom. There was a show dedicated to women who are important figures in Estonian history. So, I decided to make a series of sculptures depicting female riders as a counterbalance to the Estonian tradition of erecting equestrian monuments to men only. I want women to have more power.

We return to the house and climb the stairs. I can hear the screams of an elderly woman calling the artist's name every two seconds. On the second floor, it becomes clear where the sound comes from. On the small television screen installed in the wall, there is a video of Flo Kasearu's Grandmother. She is no longer alive, but through the art of her granddaughter, she continues to dwell in this house. A legend nearby says that when Flo's Grandma became blind, she used to call the artist for help. It also says that since in Estonia there's a lack of support system, the elderly lady could mainly rely on the help of her own family.

In addition to this small screen built into the wall, some other exhibits catch my eye on the second floor, in particular a toilet that has become a library, as well as the huge photographs of homeless people carrying on their heads something that resembles a house made of hair and symbolizes the concept of home. The photos were made in collaboration with Diana Tamane. 

We enter the artist's private apartment. Everything here feels very homely. The eldest child is exercising on the horizontal bar, the cat is purring and the window offers a cozy view of the yard. But, most importantly, it's warm. We continue our conversation.

Could you tell me, what your top human values are?

(A pause. I start laughing.)

Laughing, laughing. As you started to laugh, I realized that humor is actually one of the important aspects of my art, and of my life in general. Because I laugh a lot. I reckon it is my survival strategy. Instead of being very serious and giving in to dark thoughts, I try to laugh a lot. Yes, serious things happen, but still, in my art, I try to talk through serious topics by means of humor. Also, in this house, there are also different problems, but I still try to overcome them by adding a dip of playfulness, and then it kind of helps me to overcome more difficult things.

Can you give some examples of how you use humor to overcome problems in your house?

- To begin with, this used to be just a very old house, but when I played it around by saying that it's a museum, it became different. Now it sounds sublime. When I came here, I had to face two challenges: on the one hand, to keep the house alive and on the other – to survive as an artist. So, making a museum out of the house – was my playful solution to both problems. Because people really want to see my museum, and it now gives me this symbolic capital that I need as an artist. Another example is, when I found out that the roof was leaking, I decided to twist the situation around, and find a creative solution. Let's go to the attic and I will show you.

We climb the stairs to the attic. On the way, I open the door to the WC–library, where books are comfortably placed on a shelf above the washbasin.

In the attic, Flo Kasearu shows me the video of an artistic action on the roof of the house and explains:

One day I realized that it was time to change the roof. And then I thought I wanted to do some art in order to play it around. I didn't want some guys just to come and change the roof. But I wondered, how exactly I could play with it before changing the roof. So, my technical director and his colleague went to the roof, cut out the old sheets of metal like paper, and folded them the same way that children fold airplanes from paper. So, that's how these five-meter-long planes were created.

Where are those planes now?

They have been mostly brought to some collections. So, one is in Germany, others are in Finland and Stockholm.

What would you like to wish to those who will read our interview?

As the weather has got warmer, tick season has started again, so be careful with ticks!

--

Follow ERR News on Facebook and Twitter and never miss an update!