Antsla is a small, 1500-person town in southern Estonia that, in the summer, is a verdant, bright countryside. However, in the long Estonian winter, the town is dark for almost 18 hours a day and well below freezing, creating harsh conditions against the pale backdrop of the muted architecture leftover from the Soviet Union.
Fifteen muralists—from Estonia, Finland, Lithuania and Scotland—descended on Antsla June 13-18, to ensure the town is brightly colored year-round, as part of the Rural Urban Art festival that takes place in a different Estonian town each year.
The festival, now in its fifth year, commenced last week with a gallery show including over 70 artists on Estonian street art, attended by over 100 people, a testament to its impact in such a sparsely populated area.
Fifteen murals went up on apartment buildings, public parks and assisted living facilities in Antsla, and in the nearby towns of Võru and Vastseliina inspired by the nature and stories of the area. Many of the murals also include a subtle message of peace and solidarity with Ukraine, in the wake of the nearby invasion.
The line-up includes street artists, illustrators and graphic designers, to diversify the Estonian street art landscape and to give an opportunity for studio artists to create on a new scale.
The murals gracing the gray brick and cement walls feature a variety of imaginative, cheerful, optimistic and kid-friendly artworks of subjects like happy frogs, friends painting a rainbow, serene nature and cityscapes and abstract colorways.
The festival is a labor of love for founders and street art enthusiasts Salme Kulmar and Ita Puusepp. It’s also a labor of love for the artists—they voluntarily donate their skills and fly in from other countries to make the festival happen, so that the modest towns and care centers can receive the art free of charge.
“The bigger cities always have so much culture and events happening, but when you look at some small towns in Estonia you can see a lot of blank cement walls,” Kulmar said. Kulmar also runs a street art tour company in Tallinn and Tartu, called Pseudo Tours.
“These places need some art too, to spark them up, so we decided, ‘let’s make a street art festival for small towns’ because they actually need it and would appreciate it.”
“These places need some art too, to spark them up, so we decided, ‘let’s make a street art festival for small towns’ because they actually need it and would appreciate it.”
During the festival, local children participated in a week-long camp where they learned about nature and sustainability and painted their own mural that included environmental themes. Adults also got a chance to help paint as part of a community-wide workshop in Antsla.
RUA’s commitment to getting kids involved in art-making is crucial for their creative development, Kulmar said. “The local people and the youth especially, they maybe haven’t heard about street art and so to introduce this art form that is so normal to people who live in big cities to people in small towns who don’t have so much, it’s eye-opening for them and really wonderful,” Kulmar said. “The best part is to hear the feedback from the locals because it’s for them that we do it.”
“I wanted to do something sweet and idyllic but I also wanted it to have it say something about the world situation now.”
Taneli Stenberg, a muralist who flew in from Finland to take part in his second RUA festival, created a realistic, digestible street art piece featuring a young girl carrying a stalk of rhubarb over her shoulder against a backdrop of changing autumnal foliage. The rhubarb appears flag-like, with its big terracotta-colored leaf. “I wanted to do something sweet and idyllic but I also wanted it to have it say something about the world situation now,” Stenberg said.
“There’s a war going on nearby, so it needs to promote democracy. So what is the most democratic plant, I thought? For most of us who live in Finland, Estonia, Sweden, all the countries here know what rhubarb is—it grows almost everywhere. It’s really easy to grow and it has a great yield and it is sweet but it’s also got an acidic taste, like a democracy, and you can split the root and give it to your friends and relatives to spread it around. The rhubarb’s red coloring also hints at the Soviet history of the area.”
TO learn more about the project, you can can check out RUA’s Facebook Page & Instagram Page
