contact:
kristina.ollek@artun.ee
studio at ARS, Tallinn.
–––––––
about:
Kristina Õllek (b. 1989, Tallinn, Estonia) is a visual artist based in Tallinn, Estonia. She works in the fields of photography, video and installation, often making use of microbial and chemical processes, with a focus on investigating aquatic ecosystems, geological matter and human-altered environments. In particular, her work focuses on the marine habitat and the notion of new technologies, including the geopolitical and ecological conditions they are associated with. Her work is often site-sensitive and analyses the location and the format of exhibition-making, questioning the display and the politics of installation in a perspective of a historical museum to an online space and future archeology.
Within the past nine years, her work has engaged with the fragile ecosystem of the deep sea, been floating on the coasts of the North Sea, sunken into the hypoxic zones of the Baltic Sea; and thinking with the aquatic organisms, such as cyanobacteria, as well as the filter feeders, the living archives of our contaminated environment.
Kristina Õllek holds a Bachelor’s degree (2013) and a Master’s degree (2016) from the Photography Department of the Estonian Academy of Arts. She furthered her studies at Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissensee in 2012 and at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam in 2016. Õllek was awarded the Estonian Academy of Arts Young Artist Prize in both 2013 and 2016. From 2013 to 2018, she was a co-founder and active member of the artist-run space Rundum. In 2023, she received a three-year artist grant from the Estonian Artists’ Association and the Estonian Ministry of Culture. Her works have been shown in various international group and solo exhibitions in Estonia and abroad.