EXHIBITION // My story is my story is...

Each of these stories is different from the other, but they are all women's stories.
My story is my story is my story is my story... is... is a series of exhibitions that started in 2023, in the context of which personal stories are told through family photography, inventing ways of self-actualisation and visualising alternative narratives. It can be an arduous journey of managing emotions, self-awareness and structuring feelings. We use photography as an action, often a spontaneous unconscious action, that encapsulates the complex dynamics of relationships, ordering, fixing, undoing, sanctifying, discomfort, contradictions and more.
At Ag47, a gallery specialising in photography in the Aparaaditehas in Tartu, students and alumni of the photography department of the Pallas School of Art will exhibit their personal observations and stories.
Birgit Kaleva continues to reflect on the relationship between herself and her mother, unable to avoid constant comparisons that are weighted by the perceived difficulty of social norms of beauty. Our family role models have lived a life of otherness in a different world, and while we may initially try to fit into their shoddy shoes, as our experiences diverge we are forced to find ourselves.

Katariina Torm thinks about having a baby, or rather about the feeling of being ready for a baby, even though every parent knows that it is impossible to really prepare for what is to come. We have a lot of questions and experiences of relationships with our parents and grandparents. We have observed them in a couple relationship, analysed their actions and statements and imagined ourselves in the same situation. We end up realising our own potential by being in that situation ourselves.
Kirke Kuiv speaks in the melancholic and monochromatic language of anxiety and fear of loss. The constant feeling of fear is exhausting, change is oppressive. Awareness of the traumas buried deep within, giving form to this negative oppressive feeling through visual representation and distancing oneself helps to untangle the anchoring connections more easily in order to move on with life.
Sille Riin Rand shares life's lessons learned as it becomes clearer that love has many forms of expression and it is important to first understand what speaks to us. Parental love, or the lack of it, affects us most in life. At some point, when we are sufficiently alienated and begin to see our parents as human beings at last, we are able to become aware of the connection between their own experiences and our ability to speak the language of love.

Special thanks: Käty Tarkpea, Toomas Kalve, Erkki Luuk, Katriin Rätsepp, Kail Timusk.
The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, the Pallas School of Art and the Department of Photography.