Curator: Hanna Laura Kaljo Artists: Marie Kølbæk Iversen, Sandra Kosorotova, Pia Lindman, Andrea Magnani, Elin Már Øyen Vister, Carlos Monleon Gendall, Sam Smith and Nele Suisalu The inaugural exhibition of Kai Art Center, September 21 - December 1, 2019. Arriving into the body, do I feel restless or tired? What holds tension, pain? Then, noticing the quality of the bay, of tidal movement, of the weather, as the sun sets into the Baltic Sea. Noticing my body’s native capacity to resonate with other bodies and with the living land. We gather intimately to be with what is difficult, to witness movement and be moved. Listen, what emerges from the yet unseen and unsaid? What are we recovering from and what are we called to recover? The title of the exhibition Let the field of your attention…. soften and spread out is derived from a bodywork exercise in the handbook A Widening Field: Journeys in Body and Imagination (2004) composed by dancer, teacher of the Alexander technique and craniosacral therapist Miranda Tufnell and installation artist Chris Crickmay. Like the approach put forth in the book, we consider the creative arts through an emphasis on receptivity to our bodies and surroundings. Amid crisis, like that of the collapse of ecosystems caused by human activity, we may gather around stories of recovery. The practices of the artists featured in the exhibition span visual art, moving meditation, deep listening, writing, textile and traditional medicinal knowledge. The gradually unfolding curatorial choreography is informed by the seasonal transition towards darkness and dormancy inherent to late autumn and early winter in Estonia. It brings attention to different registers of visibility, as we gather through small private moments and those more public. Hanna Laura Kaljo (b.1989, Tallinn) is an independent curator. She received her MFA in Curating from Goldsmiths College and between 2014-18 was the Co-Founder and Co-Director of Jupiter Woods in London, where she produced numerous exhibitions, discursive events, residencies, and off-site projects. Kaljo is drawn to the cūra within the curatorial, the first being the etymological root of the latter, pointing to practices of attention and healing. In her curatorial and writing work, she is called to hold space for a holistic conception of creativity to take hold within the community of contemporary art and culture in which she has her grounding. She draws from a range of practices including artistic research, moving meditation, ecotherapy, deep ecology, The Way of Council and Work That Reconnects. Throughout 2018-19 she is engaged in a yearlong R&D project supported by the Developing Your Creative Practice grant from Arts Council England, thinking through the notion of recovery. What are we recovering from? What are we called to recover? Read the curator’s essay and the artists’ bios here. https://vimeo.com/372590693