Kris Lemsalu
∗1985, Estonia
lives and works in Tallin, Estonia and Vienna, Austria
Kris Lemsalu (*1985, Estonia) and now lives and works between Tallinn and New York. She represented Estonia at the 58th Venice Art Biennial. Her installation HOLY HELL O (2018) resembles a celestial birthing room, painted in pale pink, with a iconic jacuzzi deity at its centre, who has a ceramic vulva for a head, multiple knitwear-clad arms and is skirted by an intricately sewn pastel quilt. Multi-coloured figures dive from one corner of the room into its tub, bubbling with a murky brown discharge. Lemsalu’s grotesque fertility statue playfully ridicules its predecessors, evoking a light-hearted natal fable of which the moral reads: “(Giving) birth is miraculous, but also full of shit”.She transforms her work into a supernatural realm, occupied with otherworldly, absurd characters that guide you through stages of birth, life and death. Kris Lemsalu plays with our perception of “reality” by creating a far-removed, fantastic world that is simultaneously recognisable as our own. HOLY HELL O is an ode to life (and art), saturated with mystery, splendour and repulsion, and like the Biennale Gherdëina 7 is dedicated to the meditation on the ways of worldmaking.
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