Eve Kiiler
Meetingplace – Seaside Avenue 20

Exhibition at Hobusepea Gallery, August 2009

At this exhibition, artist's focus of interest is public use of the urban environment around Linnahall Concert Hall (architects Raine Karp and Riina Altmäe). In 1980s, Linnahall was a new powerful building complex, appreciated for its monumentality, functionality and rationality. Having once won several international awards (Award of the Architects' Union of USSR; Gold Medal of Interarch'83; State award of USSR 1984), Linnahall has lost its previous functions, that once characterised the building. All this has been replaced by the current image of a neglected building and an obstruction for the real estate developers.
Eve Kiiler documented current state of the interiors of the building and everyday public use of the territory between 2006 - 2009. She has been interested in juxtaposing more traditional architectural photos with documentary images of public use of this territory as a „public living room“. According to the artist, Linnahall and neighbouring areas by the sea in Tallinn have been the meeting places for several rituals during a few decades. For the artist, Linnahall with its monumental architecture, reminding of ancient temples, serves as a key subject for documenting changes in the urban environment in Tallinn.
Compared to the times when the feature film Schlager (directed by Peeter Urbla, produced by Tallinnfilm 1982) was made and the crowds that visited Linnahall at the end of 1980s and the beginning of 1990s, the former „living room“, with its strategic location in the city, has become the back room in periphery today. Kiiler is depicting the melancholy, degradation of monumental architecture, which is used in different ways by the new generations, who are faithful to their environment, still meeting around Linnahall.