06.11-12.12.2025

Artdepoo Gallery, Tallinn, Estonia

Artists: Brenda Purtsak & Marleen Suvi
Curated by: Kaisa Maasik
Graphic Design by: Aimur Takk

Photography by: Stanislav Stepaško
The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia
Opening drinks from Põhjala Brewery

Brenda Purtsak and Marleen Suvi became close friends already during their studies, yet they started using similar reference material only recently. Purtsak has previously focused on the detailed depiction of anonymous bodies, using surgical imagery as her source material. Suvi, in turn, has painted from personally experienced moments, often depicting herself as the subject. While Suvi has consistently drawn upon photographs—both self-taken and from her childhood—as the point of departure for her paintings, Purtsak reached her family photo archive more recently, during her solo exhibition “Distant Veils”.

For the exhibition “Shared”, we took the family photo archives of all three of us as our starting point, focusing primarily on the figure. Although the characters in the photos were different, one could say the material came from different times and places, yet similar situations. In the larger sense, it repeated itself. We selected photographs that seemed somehow unsuccessful: poorly composed, blurry, double- or overexposed.

The artists worked on the paintings by taking turns—each work travelled back and forth between their studios, undergoing several exchanges. Along the way, they shared images of the works-in-progress and discussed the directions to pursue. The paintings were completed in the plastic covered gallery late at night. Each work went through multiple iterations, its various stages documented in photographs so that the viewer could also be part of the journey. Although five paintings are exhibited, each of them reached its final form through dozens of versions—until a joint decision concluded the process.