New Tallinn art show centers queer and marginalized recovery and resilience

Nonbinary artist Maria Izabella Lehtsaar's "Hares Caress Your Hair" opened at Tallinn's Hobusepea Gallery, exploring queer and marginalized recovery, safety and resilience.
Lehtsaar, a Tallinn-based artist, centers their practice on the experiences of queer and marginalized people, blurring the line between everyday reality and fantasy.
Their new show, "Hares Caress Your Hair," observes the process of bodies recovering from trauma and violence and how minorities are forced to create safety for themselves in their own bodies, homes and fragile communities at a time when shared spaces are increasingly disappearing or being appropriated.
Lehtsaar delves into lesbian representation through a working-class and nonbinary lens, reworking symbols and semiotics to challenge a culture shaped by binary and heteronormative narratives of love and belonging.
Mixed media textile installations, collages, poetry and graphics function as honest gestures toward the pluralism and diversity of marginalized bodies, amplified symbols that protect and shield minorities from threatening forces.
"'Hares Caress Your Hair' is a rite that recognizes security as something we must consciously maintain and work on," the Estonian Artists' Association (EKL) said in a press release.
"Their work offers a delicate, radical emphasis to inner security and collective and personal patron saints at a time when there is a rise in right-wing extremism in society, when we are experiencing the long-term consequences of chronic illnesses, epidemics, wars and other traumas," it added.
"Hares Caress Your Hair" will remain open at Hobusepea Gallery through March 8.
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Editor: Kaspar Viilup, Aili Vahtla






















