For the last seven years, Sasha Milyakina has been painting pictures of Tartu – one building at a time. From its most iconic landmarks to the colorful wooden houses where people go about their daily lives, Sasha has already captured more than 350 of the city's buildings through her art.

And she has no intention of stopping there.

"I have a long list," Sasha tells me over coffee on an unseasonably warm late summer morning. "A full folder of my references, which I hope I will get to sometime. But currently I'm so preoccupied with everything."

It's no surprise to hear that 2024 is turning out to be a busy year for Sasha. A few days after we meet, her new solo exhibition "Elusive Tartu" is set to open at the A. Le Coq Brewery Museum. Alongside the exhibition, with a little help from her friend Kira Harlašova, she's also launched an interactive map of the city, providing a new way for people to explore Tartu's different districts through her artwork.

Sasha also designed the official Tartu 2024 postcard, which has been sent out far and wide to celebrate the city's year as the European Capital of Culture. Back in January, Estonia's president Alar Karis even posted signed copies of it to Bodø in Norway and Bad Ischl in Austria to congratulate them on sharing the prestigious title.

"This was a surprise to me actually," Sasha says. "I only found out when I did a vanity search online, and in the top search results there was a photo of Alar Karis. I was thinking, 'why is he there?'" she laughs. "Then I saw."

"But, yeah, I'm very proud," she says. "I'm personally a huge fan of Alar Karis – I think he's a very intelligent person who supports humanistic values."

"People have also been writing me from different parts of the world telling how they've come across my cards on other continents. Well, this is fun," she laughs.

***

After moving to Tartu in 2013 to study semiotics, it was only after 2017 that Sasha started focusing more on her artwork. What began as her attempt to catch Tartu's fleeting essence by drawing its houses, wood sheds, and backyards has since led to being commissioned to paint some of the city's most notable institutions, including the Tartu City Government and Supreme Court of Estonia.

She's also produced a series of works dedicated to her favorite local cafes. "On one hand, this was purely pragmatic," she says. "Because in Tartu it's not too easy to sketch or paint outdoors. So, I did spend a lot of time just sitting in cafes and these sketches were done on the spot."

However, she adds "the other reason is, I just like to support local small businesses and give something back to them. I know that people from these cafes are usually very happy when they see their places have been painted."

As someone who pays such close attention to the urban environment, few are better positioned than Sasha to notice how Tartu is constantly changing. Drawing is her way of capturing those parts of the city that she fears might not be around forever.

"When I first started doing this seriously, it was a project that I made about these old corner shops in Tartu. I was fascinated by their presence in this world because it felt that they would be gone soon," Sasha says. "And now, indeed they are gone"

Sasha admits that not everyone was as sad as her to see those particular remnants of life during the Soviet era disappear from the city. "I probably wouldn't call them nice," she says, "but they are nice to me," adding that they still have the capacity to invoke "this nostalgic feeling for the things that are going to leave us."

"I'm really devastated when some buildings get demolished, even the most ugly and un-useable ones," she tells me. "It's really a huge tragedy to me. Sometimes I just pass by a building and think with sadness that it will be gone very, very soon."

***

Walking through the streets of Tartu, there's no shortage of buildings you could imagine people getting sentimental about. And, Sasha says, it's not unusual for locals to reach out to her on social media to tell her how they feel.

"People are always sharing their stories," she says. "For instance, I've been traveling a lot on Viljandi maantee – the highway between Viljandi and Tartu – and there is a strange building [there] which I just liked, so I sketched it."

After sharing her sketch on Facebook, someone got in touch almost straight away to ask if they could buy it. "It was actually an old windmill and this person used to go there to get flour with their grandpa or father. So, it held some kind of very precious childhood memory."

"For me, it [might] just seem like an interesting building but then it turns out I've accidentally painted very important parts of someone's life."

Not that all the comments Sasha receives about her work are quite so sentimental, though they do invariably show how much attention people pay to the details. "I painted one house and then a guy on Facebook wrote, 'Okay, it's nice to see that this water pipe is still there because it was me who installed it," she laughs.

All this talk of nostalgia could give the impression Tartu is stuck in the past. As Sasha puts it, the city can be the kind of place where "sometimes a guy walks by our window playing an accordion," and it's not unusual to hear chickens roaming around and squawking in her neighbor's yard.

But that's just one part of a much bigger picture.

"I feel very grateful for this opportunity to live in a city that has wood heating in these very old wooden houses and people playing harmoshka (a form of accordion – ed.). And at the same time, [Tartu has] one of the major universities in this region. So it's really cool to have both – usually it's just one or the other."

"I'm [also] very glad Tartu has this policy where large chunks of the city are protected as part of its cultural milieu," she says. "It's nice that in some streets you can't build anything, even though the houses, like the ones in the street where I'm living, are basically falling apart. But, they are all part of the heritage."

"And I really enjoy this falling apart part," she smiles. "If it means [they are] being renovated and conserved in a proper way."

But, as Sasha also points out, it's not like that in every part of the city. In fact, the diversity of Tartu and its different neighborhoods is something she's also been exploring through her art as part of yet another project.

***

Sasha's work features prominently in "Our Tartu" ("Meie Tartu"), the new permanent exhibition at the Tartu City Museum, and the book that goes alongside it. Both attempt to get to the heart of what makes Tartu's different districts like Karlova, Supilinn and Annelinn unique.

"This was a really exciting project," Sasha says. "The team trusted me completely and made zero edits to the illustrations. I also enjoyed that this exhibition and book are based on anthropological research. They did lots of interviews with local people and [asked] what are their favorite places or what they dream about."

Sasha's task was "to do something collage-like or a bit punk. They wanted to introduce different aspects that were mentioned in the book and the exhibition."

"A very important part of the whole concept was that each city district has its peculiar inhabitants," she tells me. "So, not just material objects, but also animals, sometimes people and so on."

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Sasha Milyakina (@sashami_art)

As a self-taught artist who doesn't always feel "internally confident" at drawing people, Sasha admits that this also pushed her a bit out of her comfort zone.

"I started – and finished – a one semester course at the University of Tartu in croquis, so drawing the human body," she says. "We had a model and we were sketching them, I was trying to build up my confidence to draw people more often. I'm not sure if it worked," she laughs.

"I just realized that [drawing people] is something very difficult."

***

We're nearing the end of our conversation and the storm clouds gathering above suggest the good weather we'd been enjoying is about to take a turn for the worse. It's also a timely reminder that with autumn around the corner, just like the buildings Sasha has been capturing in her paintings, Tartu's year as European Capital of Culture won't be with us forever either.

But when it comes to "arts of survival," the artistic concept at the heart of Tartu 2024, there's reason to believe that the foundations for something deeper and longer lasting may have been put in place.

"I think [arts of survival] aligns very well with my core values," Sasha says. "This survival of different old layers of history and architecture in the contemporary world. It's interesting for me to see how different features, different traits of previous eras continue existing in the modern world."

"In terms of my own survival, too, I think it's my coping strategy," she says, describing the art she creates as a way "to get in closer touch with my surroundings."

"I believe this material, physical space is what unites us. It's not only language or common history or something like that. But it's by sharing this space, that we are also becoming a community."

***

The "Elusive Tartu" exhibition by Sashami is now open at the A. Le Coq Brewery Museum in Tartu and will remain on display until December 7, 2024. More information is available here.

The interactive map of Tartu featuring over 350 of Sashami's artworks can be found here.

The "Our Tartu" ("Meie Tartu") exhibition at the Tartu City Museum will be on display until 2027. More information is available here.

---

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