Estonia
Artist: Leena Kuutma
e-mail.: leena.kuutma@mail.ee
*1974 in Tallin, Estonia
Studies:
1992-96 Estonian Academy of Art, BA in sculpture
1997-2001 Estonian Academy of Art, master studies.
Exhibitions:
Pärnu, Estonia, Tallinn, Rendsburg/Germany, Kemi/Finnland, Bismar/Germany.
Open-air works stationary in collections in Estonia, Germany, Austria, Turkey
Interpretation
A population's cultural identity is deeply connected with its language. Only 1.1 million people in the world speak Estonian as their first language. Only a small part of this group lives outside Estonia.
Estonian is different from the other European languages because it belongs to the Finno-Hungarian family, rather than the Indo-European language group. Estonian has fourteen cases, but neither articles nor a grammatical gender. Thus the pronoun "which", for example, is used when referring to a man, woman or any other thing.
The Estonian alphabet contains nine vowels and it is not unusual to find meaningful words consisting of a long chain of vowels together with just a few consonants.
Leena Kuutma
Sponsor: Honorarkonsul der Rep. Estland, Dr. Jochen F. Kirchhoff