Gallery: New Telliskivi exhibition explores Arctic ghost town Pyramiden

"Ghosts of the Arctic," a photography exhibition by Australian artist Richard Denny, which portrays the haunted memories of the former Soviet coal mining settlement Pyramiden, opened on Wednesday at the outdoor gallery in Tallinn's Tellisikivi district.
Richard Denny visited Pyramiden in the summer of 2022. In "Ghosts of the Arctic," Denny investigates the themes of memory, colonialism and climate change as he explores Pyramiden, expressing the transitional space between imagination and reality in the turbulent era of late capitalism.
Pyramiden is an abandoned Soviet coal-mining settlement in the High Arctic, in the Teravka archipelago. Pyramiden was established by Sweden in 1910, sold to the Soviet Union in 1927 and eventually closed in 1988.
At the time of its operation, miners from the Donbas region of Ukraine, but also from Russia and other Soviet countries, extracted almost nine million tonnes of coal from the mine. More than a thousand people lived and worked side by side in the settlement. They had their own cultural center, sports complex, swimming pool and school. Mining there ended in 1988, a few years before the total collapse of the Soviet Union, and Pyramiden became a ghost town. Much of its infrastructure and memories were preserved in the Arctic climate.
"This settlement of dilapidated buildings and former comforts is a monument to a fallen empire, conveying a story of humanity's short-sightedness and nostalgia," said Denny.

More information about the project is available here.
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Editor: Karmen Rebane, Michael Cole