Prick of a Daisy

The pandemic-related quarantines have created a situation where interruptions in everyday practices make it impossible for people to define the flow of time and the emerging gaps in perceiving time cause anxiety. There is a lack of rituals that would help structuring and creating time, interpersonal relationships and perceiving daily changes. Similarly to rituals, ornaments contextualize time as well. Things embellished by ornaments are elevated to the present moment of time while revealing more complex reference systems. Exhibited artworks point out the rituals in daily life, reflecting how small everyday routine activities delineate time while creating moments of pause in it as well as helping to perceive changes taking place in the surrounding environment. For instance, there are motifs of capitula of the mutating plants as the result of Fukushima nuclear catastrophe – the artist has organized these to the patterns inspired by the plant ornaments characteristic to Art Nouveau. This is the way changes are happening around us, as a backdrop of our lives. At the same time, the seemingly romantic plant ornament has a certain threatening effect. The second part of the exhibition includes objects that direct our attention to the rituals in our daily lives. A simple box of candies has become an offertory where the viewer can stop for a moment and leave an offering to the nests of the box. Anna Mari Liivrand (b. 1993) is a sculptor and installation artist who often combines drawing into her artistic practice. Her artworks have a sensitive touch, Liivrand often uses everyday materials in her work, being inspired by the various practices of their use and related unconscious beliefs. Anna Mari Liivrand applies poetical language of sculpture in order to refer to disintegration, fugacity and related melancholy in contemporary society. The artist has also been intrigued by the subjects of fragility and preservation practices. During the past few years, Liivrand has been focusing on daily rituals. Anna Mari Liivrand has studied sculpture and installation (BA 2016) at the Estonian Academy of Arts, taken additional courses in the faculty of fine arts at Iceland University of the Arts and currently obtaining MA degree in contemporary art at the Estonian Academy of Arts. In 2014, Liivrand received the Young Estonian Sculptor's Award; in 2020, she was acknowledged with Eduard Wiiralt grant.