To conclude the exhibition celebrating a hundred publications by the Estonian publisher Lugemik, Page Not Found is delighted to present a work by the celebrated Estonian artist Marge Monko. She is a long-time collaborator of Lugemik, with whom she published “Don’t Wind It Up, Turn It On” (2016), “(WoW) Women of the World, Raise Your Right Hand” (2018) and “Flawless, Seamless” (2022).

Marge’s impressive wall installation ” Display, Service. Retail” can be viewed from Wednesday 1 till Sunday 12 February, during Page Not Found’s regular opening times, Wednesday through Sunday, 13:00-18:00.

Marge Monko (b. 1976) is a visual artist who lives and works in Tallinn. She has studied at the Estonian Academy of Arts, University of Applied Arts Vienna, and Higher Institute for Contemporary Art (HISK) in Ghent. Monko works with photography, video, and installation. Her works are inspired by historical images and theories of psychoanalysis, feminism, and visual culture. She works as a professor in the Department of Photography at the Estonian Academy of Arts.

We are honoured to welcome Hettie Judah for a two-part event composed of a talk and a reading group on Friday, February 3 at 11 am!

In her book “How Not To Exclude Artist Mothers (and other parents)” Hettie Judah unpicks a culture that alienates cultural workers with children and argues that a paradigm shift is needed within the art world to take account of the needs of artist mothers (and other parents: artist fathers, parents who don’t identify with the term ‘mother’, and parents in other sectors of the art world).

Hettie proposes a two-part event Starting at 11 am on Friday. The first session will introduce her practice and the book, followed by a reading group, which will look into Carolee Schneemann, “Anti Demeter: The More I Give the More You Steal / The More You Give the More I Need”  and Mary Jirmanus Saba, “Boston June 2019(Or “Artistic Genius is a Myth of the Colonial Patriarchy: Part One)” (from “Why Call it Labor?” Mophradat, 2020).

Please e-mail us at register@page-not-found.nl in order to receive the texts on time. The event is free for everyone and commences Page Not Found’s cycle Mother Reader, which addresses the issues of parenthood within the cultural world.

Hettie Judah is chief art critic on the British daily paper The i, a regular contributor to The Guardian’s arts pages, and a columnist for Apollo magazine. She writes for Frieze, Art Quarterly, Art Monthly, ArtReview and other publications with ‘art’ in the title, and is a contributing editor to The Plant magazine. Following publication of her 2020 study on the impact of motherhood on artists’ careers, in 2021 she worked with a group of artists to draw up the manifesto How Not To Exclude Artist Parents, now available in 15 languages. In 2022, together with Jo Harrison, Hettie co-founded the Art Working Parents Alliance – a supportive network and campaigning group for curators, academics, gallerists, technicians, educators and others working in the arts. 

25 January – 26 February 2023

To close this edition of Open Letters, we are happy to unveil “Caspia Cassiopeia” by Haider Mukhit on Wednesday 25! The Open Letters project invites The Hague artists to occupy our large storefront window with messages of urgency and vulnerability.

Haider’s poem and mini-installation called “Caspia Cassiopeia” speaks about the duality of water conflicts, one side being The Netherlands, where there is a risk of drowning and water overflow, and the other Kazakhstan, where there is a huge problem with drought and desertification. He finds these two extremes opposed and at the same time related to each other, considering the various extractive business ventures that tie the two countries together.

The urgency of this vulnerable message lies in the various ecological tragedies that happened and continue to happen in the Caspian Sea (as one instance), where the Kashagan oil reserve is based. Recently, there were numerous dead seals found on the shores of the Caspian coast of Kazakhstan. Other events, such as a major city-wide tasattyq (a practice of praying for water), also point to the alarming environmental situations caused by drought and oil extraction in the region.

Haider Mukhit is an artist and graphic designer from Kazakhstan, currently based in The Netherlands, with a background in literature and philosophy. As an artist, Haider combines and works between his favorite mediums of audio-visual films, typography, and textile. Much of his work engages with elements and themes of body horror, the environment, theology and folklore. Recent work includes an ongoing project on the multi-script nature of Kazakh typographical history and presenting a lecture on this topic. 

“Caspia Cassiopeia” is on view in our front window for the duration of a month, and is freely accessible from the street at any time.

It’s a new year and what better way to start off 2023 than with the launch of a new book by our friends at Lugemik, and a new installation in our project space!

Dear Friend is a monthly snail mail project initiated in 2019 by Sandra Nuut and Ott Kagovere at the Department of Graphic Design of the Estonian Academy of Arts. The letters were born with the idea to cultivate design writing culture and connect with our community at home and abroad. The publishing project dedicated itself to covering ideas, events, and more in design and visual culture in a letter format bringing together various authors. The edition was in the beginning 100 to later 200 letters each month, which were riso-printed and hand-folded in a collaborative manner. Half of the edition was distributed locally and another half globally, traveling to design institutions, schools, and professionals.

At the occasion of the launch of the Dear Friend Catalogue, our on-going exhibition celebrating 100 books by publisher Lugemik will welcome an installation of all the Dear Friend letters from 2019 till 2022.

Starts at 18:00. Entrance is free, no reservation is required.

The installation can be viewed from Saturday 14 till Thursday 19 January, during our regular opening times, Wednesday through Sunday, 13:00-18:00.

About Lugemik

Lugemik is an independent publishing initiative based in Tallinn, Estonia, founded in 2010 by graphic designer Indrek Sirkel and artist Anu Vahtra. In 2013, Lugemik opened its first bookshop on the premises of the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM) and in 2020, its second location under Tallinn Art Hall.

Lugemik is currently run by Indrek Sirkel. Indrek Sirkel (b. 1984) is a graphic designer, educator and publisher based in Tallinn. In 2015, he became the head of the Department of Graphic Design of the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA) and in 2020 was elected to be the professor of Graphic Design. Since September 2022 he is a junior researcher and a doctoral student at the Doctoral School of EKA.

About the Artists

Ott Kagovere (b. 1983) of Dear Friend is a Tallinn-based graphic designer and the head of the Department of Graphic Design at the Estonian Academy of Arts.

Sandra Nuut (b. 1987) of Dear Friend is a curator at the Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design (ETDM). Her work includes writing, lecturing and curatorial projects in the design field. Previously she worked at the Estonian Academy of Arts and New York based gallery Chamber.