Moving through life
2026

Solo exhibition at Kastellaanimaja Gallery, Tallinn, Estonia
11.03-25.04.2026

Graphic design: Johanna Ruukholm

Photos: Kertin Vasser, Rebeka Vaino

PRESS RELEASE

On March 11, Rebeka Vaino’s solo exhibition Moving Through Life, I Saw Glimpses of Beauty From Time to Time will open at the Kastellaanimaja Gallery.

The exhibition explores themes of memory, fragmentation, and physical presence, examining experiences of trauma, depersonalization, and confusion through fleeting moments of beauty. It is an attempt to find a home within oneself—in the body, in movement, and in matter.

Moving Through Life, I Saw Glimpses of Beauty From Time to Time brings together works created over the past five years in Paris, London, and Estonia, as well as new pieces created specifically for this exhibition. The exhibition features paintings, painting-sculptures, and woven sculptures that expand painting into a spatial and physical experience. The exhibition’s title is a reference to the Lithuanian-born filmmaker Jonas Mekas, whose work repeatedly explores the motif of life’s fragmentation and unexpected moments of beauty amidst mundane and chaotic experiences.

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The unfamiliar and the familiar entwine.
Touch as a map of memory, a guide through longing.
It addresses the human body,
the ephemeral traces left in folds, in smears,
in the dance of light and colour.
The glittering, burning, soothing, violent colours,
that are simultaneously too much and not enough.

Eroticism, uncertainty, madness—

Major reset.

Soften. Erupt. Soften. Erupt.

The horses charge across the canvas,
muscles taut, manes aflame,
anchoring beginnings, home, safety.
The body stretches and folds within canvas and thread.
Knitted forms twist, hold, and expand—
A suit of armour, isolating yet expanding.

The wind rushes against cold windows.
I take my coat and leave—perhaps across your street.

Moments of Acute Awakeness:
the world a hallucinatory dream.
The tactility of the universe, at times precarious, fluid.
Collapse, vertigo, psychosis, skin shedding.

The fire horse rises.

It is hard to speak, hard to stay silent,
on matters of the heart. Hold me, let this moment linger.

Solitude and desire. Depersonalisation.
The sun has not set on the dark red moon of the soul.
Time preserved, projected, played with—
childlike wonder guiding the hand.
You must travel far to return to the beginning.
Roads stretch endlessly,

a flash of a mirage,

then back to reality. All my nerves are exposed.
Navigating unfamiliar mental territory,
on the edge of hysteria,
desperate to keep what is precious safe.

I awoke and there were no walls to protect me from the moonlight.

Fibreglass grids hang in the air, holding their shape with taut tension.
latex veils shimmering,
tracing shadows and light,
surfaces porous, fragile, alive.
Pain and pleasure, gain and loss.

Am I within myself? Am I somewhere inbetween?
Memory cannot be remedied, yet trauma erases all memory.
Still, the body keeps the score.

The psychic trace of trauma:
an interruption at the interface of attention and memory.
Finding your way back, one knitted line, one coloured page at a time.

Moments appear in-between: memory invades fantasy,
control slips, mind refuses play.
I listen to your silence—unbearable, aggressive.
I sit alone at night, reflecting, thinking of you.
I see your love, your descent into your own being,
happiness and pain, terrible loneliness, glimpses of paradise lost and regained.
Every decision creates futures; some are destroyed.

As long as nothing is chosen, everything remains possible.

Loss occurs at the breakdown of attention and memory.

There are many ways to get lost.

Where have I been?
Where should I go?

Welcome back. Your room is unchanged, untouched, waiting.
You are home.

But I am still hanging—where my brain split,
where you left me.

I cannot escape.

Text by Rebeka Vaino