As a designer, Raili Keiv has always been interested in the points of contact between industry and ceramics. Her practice so far can be seen as a series of sensitive interventions in which the ordinary has taken on a new meaning.

In this exhibition, she has directed her focus towards everyday objects so ordinary as to be almost invisible – industrial ceramics from Soviet Estonia. She has selected a few works and designers from the quite densely populated industrial art scene and merged them into a new inspiring constellation, exploring their background and adding another layer to the exhibition inspired by them.

Keiv has previously also applied the same technique, which consists of rethinking existing conventions. Her selection includes works by Leo Rohlin, Anu Rank-Soans, Laine Sisa, Velda Soidla, Henriette Tugi-Nuusberg, Annika Teder, Anne Keek, Haidi Ratas and Ingrid Allik, who worked as designers in Estonian ceramic companies in the 1960s–1980s. She has used their works to create an eclectic whole, which speaks of the potential of design as a combination of different artists’ styles and production options. At the same time, it serves as a tribute to Estonian design heritage. The objects activated in this way form a new ceramic collage that can be treated as a notional dishware set, which has become the impetus for Raili Keiv’s own new work.

Based on historical material and directly relating to it, Keiv presents her comments on ceramic forms as well as patterns based on them. With the support of modern materials and means, she has repeated the forms, creating objects that incite both similarities and contrasts. At the same time, they pay homage to the work of industrial artists who also like to make unique items. Keiv does this from the position of a present-day artist working in her own studio, for whom former industrial opportunities are mostly an unattainable dream. 

By reproducing her selection, Raili Keiv has not interfered with the nature or authorship of the existing forms but has consciously remained neutral. Using modern materials and technology, she has taken the original forms as a basis and applied the casting technology that connects them while limiting herself to the tonality of the modern material.

In order to connect the historical material with her own work, the artist combines the silhouettes of the historical forms into patterns and applies them to the forms she has developed. Repetition in both form and pattern meet on her ceramic trays especially designed for the exhibition to serve as a background.

The gallery space has been constructed as an installation environment dense in objects that reference industry. The historical and modern material is supported by old and new plaster moulds. 

Raili Keiv offers exhibition visitors an opportunity to think with her, rediscover material from the history of Estonian design and reflect on its meaning and persistence.

Raili Keiv is a designer mainly working with porcelain and clay, exploring their limits and combining these with other materials. Functional forms have long been the focus of her interest and work. She has been experimenting with reinterpreting and shifting their qualities and characteristics for over ten years.

In ceramics, she is intrigued by the different potential offered by industrial production and the small studio format, the dialogue between these worlds and their contradictions, the perfection associated with industry, and the repeated unplanned errors inherent in small-scale production.

Keiv studied ceramics at the Estonian Academy of Arts and graduated from the department of product design in 2013. In 2007–2008 she complemented her studies at the Hochschule Burg Giebichenstein in Germany, and in 2012 at the Royal Danish Academy of Arts. In 2008 and 2012 she was an intern at the Kahla porcelain factory, where she was also able to realise her own work. In 2013–2017 she lived and worked in Berlin. Since 2017, she has worked in her studio at the ARS Art Factory and also teaches at the Estonian Academy of Arts.

The Room exhibition series invites contemporary artists and designers to explore items in the museum’s collections – material artefacts that have shaped our everyday environment in one way or another. The project results in an installation environment inspired by the collections, supplemented by the material and keywords chosen by the artist.

Kai Lobjakas

Artists involved: Leo Rohlin, Anu Rank-Soans, Laine Sisa, Velda Soidla, Henriette Tugi-Nuusberg, Annika Teder, Anne Keek, Haidi Ratas, Ingrid Allik, Tiina Lõhmus

Exhibition design and graphic design: Aadam Kaarma

Video: Virko Veskoja 

Exhibition team: Ha Eun Kim, Beata Batejeva (interns with Raili Keiv), mould-making master Anatol Movileanu; Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design: Kai Lobjakas, Ketli Tiitsar, Toomas Übner, Silvia Pärmann

Artist’s support group: Anton Koovit and Arno Elias Koovit

The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.