Terje Ojaver wins Estonia’s largest art grant

Estonian sculptor Terje Ojaver has won the €25,000 Kaamos art grant, the country’s largest art grant, ERR reported.

Ojaver’s work includes abstract and figurative monuments, site-specific installations, performance-based paraphrases, classical sculpture and video. Figures, often based on her own image, are a significant part of her work. Through them, she explores women’s real and imagined positions, as well as her own roles as a wife, mother and daughter, and themes of freedom, duty, strength and surrender.

Jury member Eha Komissarov said Ojaver received the grant for her long career. She said the artist turns artistic expression into a generator of the social environment and transforms the physical world into something emotional and supernatural. Her work, Komissarov added, creates a “free, magical exchange” between the physical and spiritual worlds.

Ojaver said she has several plans for next year, including a solo exhibition in Åland and hopes of showing her work in other Nordic countries, particularly Iceland. She is also planning a solo exhibition in Tallinn featuring a project dedicated to women, provisionally titled “Monument to the Mycelium.”

A total of 28 applications were submitted in the open competition. The jury included Kumu curator Eha Komissarov; Peeter Talvistu, head of Tartu Art House and chair of the Tartu Artists’ Association; artist Marge Monko; Sten Ojavee of the Estonian Centre for Contemporary Art; and Kaamos Group representatives Kaido Jõeleht and Jürgen Mikk Jõeleht.

The grant is awarded through a partnership between Kaamos Group and the Estonian Centre for Contemporary Art. Its focus was women artists in 2025 and artists over 60 in 2026. The focus for 2027 will be announced next year.

Ojaver’s works will be on display on the second floor of the Polaris building in Tallinn’s Avala quarter from November 19 until the end of January.