If I was a bird

If I was a bird

Kristi Kongi

Oil on canvas

182 × 190 cm

2012

Enquire

Kristi Kongi is an artist represented by the Kogo Gallery, who recently got a nomination for the artist’s salary in Estonia, which will allow her to devote to her work over the next three years.

It is an extraordinary opportunity to acquire a painting by Kristi Kong from the beginning of her creative career. The artwork is from Kristi Kong’s solo exhibition “I wish I Were a Bird” at the Hobusepea Gallery in Tallinn in 2012 that was prized with the Young Artist Award. The whole idea of the exhibition started from one single object – a toy box. The rotating figurines in the toy box are the main characters of the show. The artist plays around with the ideas of being awake and sleep and that bends the sense of reality, loses the sense of time, concentrates the mind on the present moment. The painting shows a mixture of abstract and realistic depictions. Kristi Kong has moved towards a more abstract approach in her later works.

About the artist

Kristi Kongi (born 1985) is a painter and installation artist whose work focuses on colour, light, and space. Her brightly coloured paintings often take the form of impressive installations made for specific settings creating effect that Estonian art critic Elnara Taidre described as “painting within a painting” or meta-painting. Besides painting on canvas, walls, floors and ceilings, she also uses various coloured materials such as fabric, plywood and acrylic plastic to create her installations. Her works are based on specific or imagined places, and her observations, emotions and memories. Kristi Kongi is using thorough research and experiments in painting where she trials various colours, light and shade. The artist refers to these experiments as ‘exercises with the moon’. Her work is both poetic – this is also expressed in the titles – as well as systematic and analytical.

Kristi Kongi studied painting at Tartu Art College (BA, 2004-2008) and graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts painting department (MA, 2008-2011). She’s been awarded with Young Artist Prize (2011), Sadolin Art Prize (2013), Konrad Mägi Prize (2017), Estonian Cultural Endowment’s annual award (2021) and was nominated for the Köler Prize in 2016. Kristi Kongi is among the recipients of the national artists’ salary between 2022–2024. She is an Associate Professor at the Estonian Academy of Arts painting department.

See her profile also in the artists’ database by the Estonian Centre for Contemporary Art.