Estonian performance artist Maria Metsalu takes 'Kultuur' to London

Estonian performance artist Maria Metsalu is set to unveil a new iteration of her ongoing work "Kultuur" in London this month. The performance in London, begins in the street, where people will witness the artist's interactions with a ubiquitous element of urban life – the hotdog vendor.
"Kultuur" presents an anthropomorphized wildflower as an object of spectacle, while at the same time illuminating and complexifying some universal paradoxes of existence; the sun as something that gives life and energy, but something that can burn right through it.
During the performance, Metsalu confronts audiences in such a way that also scorns this spectacle, and the performance offers a moment of reflection, for all involved, on participation and complicity – a collective assemblage of exchange, of ritual, of unexpected and unknowable participation.
With a hypnotic candor, and with intensities varying between states of pleasure, indifference, suffering and hope, audiences are led, pied piper-like, to the TINA Gallery in North London.
There, the collective body of the audience will orbit the sun – an environment collaboratively made by Metsalu and fellow artist Karim Boumjimar in the gallery space.
In the exhibition at the TINA Galery. Maria Metsalu and Karim Boumjimar explore, through Kultuur, the possibility of the sacred in the profane, the poetic in the prosaic. It presents earthly pleasures, even if their energy comes from the body of a celestial star. It is a ritual of expenditure. An economy of desires.
"Kultuur" is described as a celebration of life and its dualities – a celebration of its fleeting and sensual nature.
Private viewing and Maria Metsalu's performance will take place on Thursday, January 16, while the exhibition is on display from Friday, January 17 to Saturday, March 1.
More information is available here.
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Editor: Michael Cole