Back To The Roots | PAX MAGNA
For this art residency, I designed my work from two concepts - Back To The Roots and PAX MAGNA - which intertwine and self-generate in such a way in my mind that I could not give up any of them, despite the short time at my disposal. The fruit is an unusual exhibition since each concept has its own poster and the work encompasses the two without concrete borders, even if the result will be presented on different dates and in two distinct locations, one being more history-laden than the other. These are site-specific installations in the Tallinn Loewenschede Tower and in the old deactivated kiln of the Ars Ceramic Centre. Work will continue to grow for me in time as much as possible. In this sense, it is a work in progress.
Regarding the concepts, it is simple: since we live unprecedented times (I refer to the rise of technology which soon sees the concrete advent of robots in all areas, including our daily life; to the manipulation of man by man since the means of information and communication technology allow it with such ease that it is enough to have a "major interest" or a "short cut" of morality as a justification; to the dazzling and relentless rearmament of many states, as if giving itself all the means to protect life and to preserve peace had become secondary or "a matter for the weak"), the man of today believing himself powerful beyond any limit, the suggestion of a 180° turn could serve as a questioning. Back To The Roots will take a different form in everyone's mind. Besides, this is only an invitation made on the field of art! For me, it is humbly about going back to the beautiful moments of childhood when parents sowed in all conscience for life, where I also met art (I am thinking, among other things, of Brancusi's work and of Tarkovsky's movie Stalker - also one of my reasons to be in Estonia); also to return to the first love and the deep ties that connect me to the ancestors. PAX MAGNA (The Great Peace), this is perhaps what lacks at all at the moment, faced with the outbreak of these wars, in the face of discord and division, but also, thought to another level, the most difficult goal to reach during a lifetime. Bringing the idea of peace inside an architecture designed for war, like this medieval city tower, was a catalyst for my project. It is a piece made of wholeness, harmony and love and not the one generated by the void and the detachment spread by oriental philosophy.
These are two sites that have fueled my imagination during a year and there are serious reflections in front of our uncertain present, for a too short residency time regarding the requirements of the ceramic making process. I fed this project with all my means, my enthusiasm and my love for these lands of the Baltic that brings me back to this corner of the world. I care about it. I believe in it.
This work is dedicated to my mother and all those who have lost someone dear in the recent chaos.
• Loewenschede Tower Exhibition: August 26th - September 4th 2025
Opening: August 26th 2025 at 6 p.m., Kooli Street 7, Tallinn (entrance from the park).
Presence of the artist at the Tower on Saturday 30th, from 3 to 6 pm.
In the other days, the exhibition can be seen between 12:00 and 16:00, sometimes 18:00. The Tower is open to tourists' visit; Please inquire at +3726464096.
• ARS Art Factory Exhibition, ARS Ceramic Centre: September 2nd - September 30th 2025, Pärnu Mnt 154, Tallinn
Artist's CV
Visual and sound artist Ana Maria Asan defines herself as a poet and an explorer.
She was born in Bucharest at the end of the communist regime in a family who gave her a solid education. First trained to become a musician as her father, she chose to study philology at the University of Bucharest before moving to Brussels where she studied art and put the bases of her first freelance artist studio.
Asan is mostly known for the SONORES project she has developed for about fifteen years, which associates ceramics and sound in an experimental way, with a curiosity and enthusiasm that only pioneers display. For her, the ceramics has always a sonorous dimension connected to the memory, the equivalent of odor and flavor in Marcel Proust's thoughts. Intuitive and experimental, her work (that can be also glass, drawing, photography, textile or video) has been presented in some ten solo shows as well as in international art events in Europe, China, South Korea and Taiwan. Among other awards, her installation There Is No White Noise, Only Colourful Sound won the International Gold FuLe Prize and an art residency in Fuping, China. After Mark Rothko Center in Daugavpils, Latvia, the artist is for the second time in residency in ARS Art Factory Tallinn.
