Rebeka Vaino









A Portable Paradise:
What would you pack in your case of emergency kit?
2024


Goldsmiths MFA degree show




Goldsmiths, University of London , MFA degree show, July 2024.










I asked my mum to bring me a small bag of sand

from our summerhouse

and she brough me a grip of it



now its my paradise

I keep it in my pocket,

nailed to my wall

       or under my pillow


I trace its ridges

and smell its seaweed smell

hum the sound fo the waves



and when life gets too much

I empty it on my desk

run my fingers through its grains

and keep holding it

                                         ‘til I fall asleep.

- RV
after A Portable Paradise by Roger Robinson




A Portable Paradise: What Would You Pack in Your Emergency Kit? brings together sculpture, painting and live performance in an immersive installation that moves between interior and exterior spaces. Drawing on practices of knitting and crochet, Rebeka Vaino creates sculptural forms cast in latex, resin and acrylic, embedding them with sand from her summer home and fragments of traditional Estonian lace and crocheted linens collected across the country. These materials carry traces of domestic labour, care and inheritance, holding personal and collective memory within their surfaces. The installation unfolds in dialogue with Vaino’s paintings and the architecture of the exhibition space, responding to shifting daylight and reflections inspired by the Ring Spa in Tallinn’s Õismäe district. 

A second chapter extends outdoors, where Vaino performs The World Is Spinning Too Fast, I Need Something to Hold On To. Using a hand-made carpet beater based on Soviet-era designs, the performance weaves together childhood play, disciplined movement and endurance, combining post-dance techniques with ballet and gymnastics. Across sculpture, painting and performance, the exhibition asks what we cling to in moments of instability, and how notions of refuge, nostalgia and resilience can be carried, improvised and reimagined.