Hold Me Tender

Participating artists: Agnė Jokšė, Keiu Maasik, Maija Mustonen, Sarah Nõmm and others

Everyone is lucky or unlucky to be born in their own skin, call it a cosmic inevitability or a gift inspired by the universe’s absurdity. Our outlook on this planet is determined, among other things, by our species, gender and nationality, but also by the community around us. In the anxious modern times there seems to be a constant lack of care, but from time to time, rays of hope also shine through. Every now and then, we can see great crises arousing sympathy and encouraging people to help others. But why do we need a pandemic or a war in order for us to recognise that our neighbour is also a human being? Could this kind of care be also part of our everyday life?

The international group exhibition Hold Me Tender deals with close relationships, health and social roles, driven by the realisation that in order to be good, you must first feel good yourself.

The exhibition is part of Tallinn Art Hall’s ongoing exhibition series, which pays special attention both to the possibility of being good and to ecological responsibility in conditions of certain destruction. The series is an institutional attempt to find an ethically suitable platform for dealing with burning issues. Therefore, we have excluded all single-use materials from the standard “toolkit” of a contemporary art exhibition, using as few materials as possible – and only things found on site.