A shaman drum anchors review of Kumu exhibition

Jan Kaus focuses on a cracked shaman drum in his review of the exhibition “Expedition. The Finno-Ugric person and the power of the image,” published in Sirp and carried by ERR. The exhibition, curated by Linda Kaljundi, is at Kumu until February 21, 2027.

Kaus describes the exhibition as a significant cultural undertaking because it examines not only the history and geography of Finno-Ugric peoples, but also Estonians’ ambivalent relationship with Finno-Ugric culture, which can seem both familiar and foreign.

The review contrasts a traditional outlook that Kaus associates with tolerance and attentiveness to nature with a more materialistic, competitive ethos. He points to tensions over Estonia’s forests, saying that sacred groves are now threatened not by foreign missionaries, as in a well-known image by Friedrich Ludwig von Maydell, but by Estonians themselves.

The exhibition also addresses the capitalist exploitation of Finno-Ugric peoples’ environments, changes to traditional cultures under European and Muscovite influence, and how the act of studying a culture can affect what is being studied. Kaus notes that the resistance of Finno-Ugric peoples without their own state receives less attention, but says the exhibition’s varied materials make it difficult to capture in a single account.

One object held Kaus’s attention: a shaman drum whose maker is identified, playfully and formally, as “a master unknown today.” Kaljundi’s accompanying text says Lennart Meri obtained it from young people on the Kamchatka Peninsula. The drum was later used in performances of Veljo Tormis’s choral work “Curse Upon Iron.” A photograph in the exhibition publication shows Tormis holding it at the work’s premiere in 1973 in the University of Tartu assembly hall.

Kaus says the curator’s choice of the verb “lured” to describe how Meri acquired the drum points to the problem of cultural appropriation.