Anyone who has spent time walking the streets of Tartu has probably already seen Kairo's work.

From her hand-painted strawberry stickers to the electricity boxes scattered among the colorful, wooden houses of bohemian neighborhood Supilinn, evidence of Kairo's naïve artistic "vandalism" can be found on every corner of town.

Her work is so much a part of the fabled "spirit of Tartu" that Kairo was chosen as one of the city's cultural ambassadors — a select group of southern Estonians tasked with "spreading the good news" that, in 2024, Tartu was the European Capital of Culture (ECoC).

That year, you could see Kairo's artworks popping up at abandoned buildings in her hometown and in Tallinn, while her strawberries were plastered all over Tartu's number 25 bus, which doubled up as the largest sticker exhibition in Europe.

Kairo even found time for a solo show at the HÄKI Gallery, marking 15 years since she first picked up a paintbrush and naively began creating her own works.

Fast forward two years, and Tartu 2024 is already starting to feel like a distant memory.

"I look back with gratitude and fondness, no doubt about that," Kairo says of Tartu's year in the European spotlight.

"I do poke fun at the fact we have now entered the post-Tartu 2024 period," she adds. "When the rivers of wine and champagne are flowing elsewhere and I have gone back to my proverbial state of starvation."

But after a brief period where she admits to "losing her spark," Kairo is "hungry again, just like the old days" and ready to share "Black Butterfly Bread" — her new exhibition of still lifes at the A. Le Coq Beer Museum.

"It was teaching a course on street art at Tartu Art School that inspired me to create my first stencil still life," Kairo tells me. "Now I see myself making a few more — I want to get looser with it, to have even more fun."

The works in "Black Butterfly Bread" may look good enough to eat, but as Kairo is quick to point out, there's always the danger of something more sinister lurking beneath the surface.

"To share food with someone you love is surely a brief form of paradise on earth," she says. "Though," Kairo concedes, "being loved by me also means that at some point I am going to attempt to feed you maggots."

But maggots are also a sign of new life, and as Tartu slowly reawakens from a long, cold, lonely winter, Kairo is approaching the future with a renewed sense of optimism.

"Looking ahead, I see uncertainty, but I can take it," she says, adding that "whatever unfolds I will paint, dance and swim my way through it."

"And that's what usually happens when I paint a still life," she explains. "I'm bending matter to achieve more stability, to soothe the anxious mind."

After all, she asks: "Why else would I be unfurling nine meters of art on the wall like something from a feverish dream?"

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"Black Butterfly Bread" by Kairo opens on Tuesday, March 10, at the A. Le Coq Beer Museum in Tartu.

The exhibition will be on display until June 6.

More information is available (in Estonian) here.

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