SIGRID VIIR

Published 3 September 2025

Sigrid Viir is one of the six artist part of the show Shaping the Unclaimed curated by Kati Ots and Trine Stephensen during the Tallinn Photomonth 2025. Shaping the Unclaimed is an international urban space exhibition that takes place in six locations around the Kaubamaja department store’s intersection. In an urban environment saturated with an overwhelming amount of stimuli, the project seeks ways in which art can offer moments of relief and open new perspectives on what we see and experience daily.

This urban landscape is a visually and historically charged area where layers of different eras as well as important landmarks of Tallinn meet. Kaubamaja department store and Viru Centre – two symbols of commercial architecture from different eras. A new skyscraper being built on the site of the former Estonian Academy of Arts. The polemic statue Dusk located on the terrace of the Viru Centre. A constant flow of people, both underground and on the ground. You are standing in a monumental environment – not just in terms of scale, but also in terms of meaning and visual intensity.

The site-specific works intervene with the urban space on multiple levels, turning up both on the usual walking paths as well as in places that tend to be often overlooked. The selection of artists is similarly diverse. All the artworks have been created specifically for the Kaubamaja intersection, and the artists from different generations and nationalities endow the exhibition with their unique perspectives and ways of relating to the space.

Tell us about your process. What reference or influence (if any) do you take from other mediums?

My process usually starts by moving around the subject matter and trying to find this mysterious something to work with. While reading and looking at whatever seems relevant and rather going around in circles to stumble upon something unpredictable I start writing down diverse keywords and puns. This is actually an important and helpful step for me to work on a visual outcome later as well. I use some of  those keywords and puns to write some rhymingly chewed compositions of letters (something that is like a poem) in the final steps when the concept is more ripe. Those rhyming compositions in my mind open up or give an extra layer to the exhibited artwork and are not too pointing. In Estonian “composing poetry” also means to lie (luuletama), it is a friendly soft imaginative lie. And this is something that a photograph also is I think. We tend to take it as a piece of reality but actually there is always an element of a lie in it. 

I am simultaneously trying to think about the overall idea, a visual outcome and the space where the work will be exhibited. I also think frames are or could be a continuation of the photograph, of the idea on the image so this is also something I work with.

I could not put my finger on one specific medium that influences me. I would say it depends what am I looking for or thinking of at the time and what I would like my artwork to do.

Are these pictures concerned with exploring formal and aesthetical interests – studies of form, colour, movement, how things work together, or are they representational, metaphorical?

The photographs of “The Extent of Results” are representational, metaphorical.

Typically, are your works more about construction or deconstruction?

I would say both. They seem to be quite inseparable 

Are you a photographer or an artist using photography?

I see myself more as an artist using photography.

Does your work reflect on the medium of photography or the photographic image?  If so, is that intentional?

Yes. If I would use some other medium than photography I would probably have a different outcome for my idea since the medium itself offers specified “tools” and connotations to work with and how we read it. I tend to wear the “glasses of photography" quite early in the thinking process.

Are you interested in the notion of your pictures as objects? Do you think about how their physicality may endure as you are photographing them or is that an afterthought?

Yes, I tend to have the need to formalize my photos quite often as spatial objects. Sure it depends on the concept but in most cases the frame for me is part of the overall idea of the artwork or an extra sentence, a reference and if the image is not hanging on the wall the viewer has an opportunity to walk around it and already have a bodily connection to it. I think it is easier to relate or have a “conversation” with objects because there is a tactile element to it and we know how to relate to objects. It works kind of like an icebreaker between the viewer and an artwork.

But it could be that it is not spatially that present or what I want to say is that I find it also interesting to think of a sculptural photograph in a more abstract way to think about all the layers in it and how that could be seen as a spatial or sculptural element. 

Often sculptural photographic works are concerned with elevating banal objects, situations or events to a status of ‘art’ – when does something become art for you?

If something is moved from its original usual standing point (objects, events, encounters, ideas, etc.) in a way that new perspectives, thoughts are arising then it might be art.

Sigrid Viir (1979) is a photo and installation artist who lives and works in Tallinn. She has studied cultural theory at the Estonian Institute of Humanities and graduated from the department of photography at the Estonian Academy of Arts. She has actively participated in exhibitions in Estonia and abroad.

“As an artist I am interested in analyzing the daily aspects of human existence and the related tangle of social norms and assumptions. Through photography and installation, I examine the sifting boundary between the totality of work and personal leisure, and how different frameworks manifest in the roles individuals occupy – particularly those expected of women. Humour, absurdity, and the peculiarities of visual language are central tools in my practice.”