Tag Archives: Maria Valdma Härm

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ONE TO MANY: A-Galerii Annual Jewellery Exhibition 2025

This year, the largest annual group exhibition of Estonian jewellery art turns its focus to values. At a time when value is so often reduced to numbers, the artists highlight other forms of worth – those shaped by collaboration, community, and the relationships that emerge in shared space. The exhibition brings together works by A-Galerii’s community alongside artists who have recently engaged with jewellery from new angles, creating a meeting point across generations and backgrounds.

The exhibition design by artist Karl Joonas Alamaa features soft figurative objects made from leftover garment textiles, combined with organic wooden and metal structures. It intertwines jewellery with sculptural forms and invites reflection on the role of jewellery amid the complexities of being human and living through sharply contrasting crises.

The title “One to Many” points to the tension between valuing uniqueness and universality, carrying an ironic undertone: whatever, just one among many. Each artwork becomes a small world of its own, a question and a possible answer. In a large group exhibition, seemingly similar parts multiply and individuality may blur, yet something distinctly original still emerges, offering new perspectives and unexpected shifts.

The exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.

Curator: Sille Luiga

Exhibition design: Karl Joonas Alamaa

Graphic design: Villem Sarapuu

64 artists: Mirjam Aun, Andrei Balašov, Merike Balod, Jens Andreas Clausen, Margus Elizarov, Rita-Livia Erikson, Kati Erme, Elize Hiiop, Tatiana Iakovleva, Hedi Jaansoo, Ivar Kaasik, Keesi Kapsta, Mari Käbin, Liisi Kõuhkna, Keiu Koppel, Ülle Kõuts, Kalle Kotselainen, Olga Tea Krek, Kadi Kübarsepp, Triin Kukk, Valdek Laur, Kristiina Laurits, Krista Lehari, Claudia Lepik, Viktorija Lillemets, Elis Liivo, Urmas Lüüs, Keiu Maasik, Tõnis Malkov, Henry Mardisalu, Ülle Mesikäpp, Juulia Aleksandra Mikson, Paul Aadam Mikson, Maarja Niinemägi, Erle Nemvalts, Ulrika Paemurru, Õnne Paulus, Margit Paulin, Mari Pärtelpoeg, Darja Popolitova, Ane Raunam, Anne Reinberg, Mari Relo-Šaulys, Liisa-Chrislin Saleh, Tamara Sergijenko, Kairi Sirendi, Birgit Skolimowski, Riin Somelar, Kärt Summatavet, Hansel Tai, Sven Tali, Harry Tensing, Margus Tänav, Bianca Triinu Toots, Kertu Tuberg, Maria Valdma-Härm, Ene Valter, Katrin Veegen, Kadi Veesaar, Kertu Vellerind, Tea Vellerind, Raili Vinn, Ülle Voosalu

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CEMETERY OF WORDS

From Tuesday May 16, the exhibition CEMETERY OF WORDS by Maria Valdma Härm will be open in the VAULT of A-Galerii. On June 2, at 5PM a public artist talk with Maria Valdma Härm will take place at A-Galerii after which there will be an exhibition tour with the artist. The exhibition will stay open until June 10.

CEMETERY OF WORDS is a performative library, where actions are stored into matter in the form of jewellery and an installation. The burned books are collected from the book collection point, from where they would have gone on to be destroyed. This action with the books is like an act of euthanasia. In many ways, the author’s idea was inspired by Jean Paul Didierlaurent’s book “The Reader on the 6.27” and Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s “Shadow of the Wind”.

With CEMETERY OF WORDS the artist continues to develop the existing themes in her work that are related to memory and space. Her last solo exhibition “Memory Palace” at the Tallinn City Gallery was based on the location method (method of loci), where information is organised by imagining it – memorable words or thoughts are made into pictures in the mind and placed successively next to the most prominent places on that journey.

With this exhibition the focus is on text, word and paper. The idea is driven by a certain sense of inevitability – by the loss of different possibilities of capturing texts and the analysis of this. For example a physical book that is fading into insignificance; how long do we need a paper book on our bedside table or in our bag? This is the regret over something that’s disappearing, over the possible extinctions of the inner dialogues that emerge from texts that have been read and that have settled in the subconscious. A regret over the possibility of “stealing” existence and identities.

Maria Valdma Härm’s work centres around the relationships of spatiality, memory and the individual which she explores through the poetics of jewellery art. Her work is based on connecting jewellery with issues regarding the quality of spaces, examining the connections between the wearer and the worn item, as well as on the reflections arising from the fusion of personal and public space. The jewellery and the space as a whole is something that exists and expands in the artist’s mind from the very beginning of her creative process and these elements form a conceptual unity in all of her solo exhibitions. Valdma Härm explores how identities emerge, and how relationships set and store as poetic images in space and memory, consciousness or cognition. The jewellery as a message carrier together with the installative space will transform the “word” into something wearable that will reflect from the personal to the general, from the worn item onto the wearer and from there onwards onto a passing stranger. Further encounters are elusive.

Maria Valdma Härm (born in 1973) is a renowned Estonian jewellery artist. She graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts in 2000 with a master’s degree in metal art. Valdma Härm has participated in exhibitions since 1994. In addition to Estonia and several other European countries, she has had exhibitions in Brazil, China, Korea and the US. From 1996-2005 she participated in the art group F.F.F.F.. She has been awarded the annual prize of the Cultural Endowment of Estonia in 2021 and in 2002 (together with the F.F.F.F. group). In 2016, she received the Young Estonian Jewellery Award. 

After 30 years of exhibition activity, Valdma Härm’s works can be found in the permanent collections of several museums (Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design, Art Museum of Estonia), as well as private collections around the world. Maria Valdma Härm is a member of the Estonian Artists’ Association and is a gallerist for the association’s HOP Gallery.

Thank You:

Anders Härm, Piret Kändler, Andres Ansper, Eve Kaaret, Ketli Tiitsar and Henri Leetmäe.