Artist: Anna Ceipe

Venue: Hoib Gallery, Tallinn

Text: Vaida Stepanovaite

It was a day, or maybe a night, but definitely one like no other. The sea was restless, screechingly slashing its waves into concrete blocks piled up ashore, one huge stride following an even larger stride. Was this the moment when a weary walrus came upon the shores of Latvia this summer? –– a sight like no other, the news blasted.

It can get no shrimp here, poor thing, the artist says in one of our conversations. Was the Baltic sea as such when a brown bear was floating on a block of ice – I kid you not – towards an Island of Seals (the tuskless kin of walrus). An island stone’s throw from Latvia albeit bearing the name given by Estonia?

No one really saw the bear with their own eyes, but the trail remains. Anna’s work is cross-stitched with curious stories, pulsating materialities, and continental drifts. The stitches flesh out a web of unbelievable origins that have their way of tickling your ear, your nose, your throat. As I squint inside the neck of a glass aroma vessel, it starts resembling the inside of a nose. If you would stick yours in, I promise, a peculiar intimate memory of a Latvian seaside town will be instilled in your membrane: a local fish factory on a Tuesday, spices in storage units waiting to be handed out to traveling sailors, creaky damp wood boards of a ship.

Text by Vaida Stepanovaitė