Flo Kasearu
Tsunami bath
Art Installation

During the course of the festival, visitors will be afforded the opportunity to view two works by Estonian artist Flo Kasearu, which have been temporarily located in the park at 3 Goyki Street. The piece entitled Soap for a Lifetime (2023) makes a direct reference to the artist's family home in Tallinn, where she has been running the Flo Kasearu House museum for a period of 11 years. This live, site-specific installation addresses a number of key issues, including questions of ownership, gentrification, institutional hierarchy and the artist's ability to navigate her work within this framework. The Sopot installation replicates the architectural and stylistic features of the museum, offering visitors insight into the concerns, challenges, and joys of the house's owner. These include issues such as flooding, a lifetime supply of soap for the artist's sauna, and problems associated with a leaking roof. The work draws on the tradition of artists' house-workshop-museums in the Baltic region.

The second work to be installed in the park is entitled Landscape Painting (2013) and depicts a tsunami wave on a large-format banner. The placement of the work between the trees, yet in close proximity to the villa, creates the illusion of immersion in a natural environment. The work serves as a reminder of the increasing absence of nature in the context of accelerating human activity and the potential dangers and disasters that result from an imbalance between the two. In the context of 2024 and Sopot, the work gains another layer of meaning, namely the threat from the East (the escalation of the war between Russia and Ukraine), a topic that is widely discussed in both Poland and Estonia.

A home for a lifetime, daily care, guests and residents of lands and spaces. The sea view is an additional benefit, both in terms of aesthetic appeal and economic value.

The involvement of Estonian artist Flo Kasearu in the Sopot by the Book Festival is based on the centrality of themes related to hospitality and care in the artist's oeuvre. These concepts are of fundamental importance in the conceptualisation of the visual arts programme of Goyki 3 Art Incubator for the year 2024.