Kristi Kongi: Chromatic Drift
The painter Kristi Kongi’s large-scale solo exhibition is one of the highlights of the Kumu Art Museum’s anniversary year. It is the first solo exhibition by an Estonian woman artist in Kumu’s great exhibition hall, featuring new works created specifically for this event. The exhibition evokes a holistic sensory and spatial experience centred on colour, a hallmark of Kristi Kongi’s oeuvre. Extending beyond the canvas, colours and motifs have spilled onto the floor, walls, windows and the outdoor space.
Chromatic Drift reflects the artist’s inner journeys over the past few years, during which colour has served the purpose of mapping and preserving both states of mind and memories. The works feature recurring motifs of openings and passages, which reflect a sensory journey to somewhere else, a parallel world. The staircase, both as an image and as an object, gives direction for either moving forward or staying put. These empty landscapes created by Kongi do not speak of arrival, but instead draw attention to a state of in-betweenness.
Artworks displayed
Gallery
Curator Ann Mirjam Vaikla on the exhibition:
Kristi Kongi’s artistic practice is characterised by processuality and affectivity, which manifest in a state of constant movement and in the shifting or dissolution of boundaries. The artist’s journey began in 2010, when she employed a realistic style to convey personal memories while also demonstrating sensitivity in site-specific work. Over time, Kongi’s artistic practice has moved toward increasingly abstract approaches, with a central focus on working with colour, light and space, as well as the interplay between them. The later incorporation of text, primarily through the titles of her works, forms a system of its own alongside the chromatic space and marks a return to personal themes. Kongi’s work encompasses techniques ranging from traditional oil and acrylic paintings and watercolours to painted spaces and installations, driven by a deep engagement with and dedication to monumental painting.
Kristi Kongi’s work has evolved over the past decade and has acquired new layers of meaning through exhibition projects, residencies and numerous visits to Mexico. In her spatial installations, the manipulation of artificial and natural light plays a key role, often enacted through situating the works within the changing rhythms of the seasons. Kongi employs a wide range of materials: plexiglass, wood and plastic film, expanded in this exhibition to include ceramic tiles and stained glass.
According to the artist, chromatic in the exhibition’s title refers to an abundance of colour, while drift evokes a poetic mode of being in an unmapped territory. The paintings radiate a certain darkness, in which pure spectral colours have been replaced by earthbound tones, such as purple, brown and burgundy. These landscapes, seemingly ablaze, speak to the aesthetics of the Anthropocene, where collective perceptions of both ecological unease and an uncertain sociopolitical situation have become, through the artist’s perceptual world, a reflection of the contemporary world. Kongi’s colour-rich environments are as poetic as they are political: they are tangible and clearly defined, yet at the same time abstract and indescribable. Chromatic Drift offers an opportunity to lose oneself in a state of full presence.
Kristi Kongi (b. 1985) studied in the Painting Department at Tartu Art College (2004–2008), continued her studies at the Institute of Fine Arts of Lahti University of Applied Sciences in Finland, and completed her master’s degree in painting at the Estonian Academy of Arts in 2011. She has received the Young Artist Award (2011), the Sadolin Art Award (2013), the Konrad Mägi Award (2017), and the Estonian Cultural Endowment Annual Award (2021). In 2016, she was nominated for the Köler Prize, and from 2022 to 2024, she was one of the recipients of the national artist laureate salary. Kristi Kongi has participated in numerous exhibitions both in Estonia and abroad. Her solo exhibitions have taken place at the Tallinn Art Hall, Tartu Art House, Kogo Gallery, Karen Huber Gallery in Mexico City and many other venues. Kongi’s works are held in the collections of the Art Museum of Estonia, the Tartu Art Museum, the European Central Bank and the European Patent Office, as well as in private collections around the world. Since 2017, she has served as an Associate Professor and Head of the Painting Department at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Estonian Academy of Arts.
Curator: Ann Mirjam Vaikla
Exhibition design: Mari Hunt and Grete Daut (MARIHUNT architects)
Graphic design: Brit Pavelson
Coordinator: Anastassia Langinen
