Ann Mirjam Vaikla‘s artistic practice as a curator, artist and scenographer, is focused on the intertwinement of climate justice; non-human species/bodies; and processes of decolonization. These topics have been addressed in several of her previous curatorial projects, including the 8th Artishok Biennial Botanical Witnesses (2022) at the Tallinn Botanic Garden; Point of No Return. Attunement of Attention (2021) at Narva Art Residency (NART). She holds a BA in Scenography from the Norwegian Theatre Academy and an MA in Culture and Arts from the Novia University in Finland. She is currently obtaining her postmasters at the Decolonizing Architecture Advanced Studies (DAAS) programme at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm (2022-24). She is the co-curator of the residency cycle KORDON LAB on Food and Energy (2023-24). Since 2023 she is working as the curator of contemporary art at the Kumu Art Museum (Art Museum of Estonia).

During her residency at PAiR Ann Mirjam Vaikla will focus on writing her curatorial essay for the international group exhibition They Began To Talk that will open in February 2025 at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Kumu Art Museum.

The exhibition They Began To Talk, co-curated with Hanna Laura Kaljo, regards what it feels like to be a body in an era of climate change and environmental inequality. The exhibition conceives of the ‘body’ as an expanded concept, which encompasses humans, other living beings and the ecosystems of which they are a part: from rivers and mountainous terrains to coastal areas and celestial bodies. It makes reference to the idea that the boundary of our human body is not the skin that envelops it, rather we extend beyond it, by way of relationship to what surrounds us. The exhibition observes this blurred border between what is ‘within’ and what is ‘without’ through the phenomenon of ‘environmental trauma’—trauma caused by abrupt and rapid environmental changes—characterised by silence. They Began To Talk brings the conversational ‘body’ to the fore, with a focus on Estonia and the wider Nordic-Baltic region.

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