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 is a painter and installation artist whose works are based on her observations, emotions and memories placed in specific or imagined places. She uses colour, light and space as her main world-building tools and installations as extensions of her paintings, often creating a “painting inside painting” effect. 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. Kongi makes use of in-depth research and experiments in painting, where she trials various colours, light and shade. Her work is at once poetic – as is also expressed in the titles – and systematic and analytical.

Kristi Kongi (b. 1985, Tallinn, Estonia) is an Estonian artist living in Tallinn. She is Associate Professor and Head of the Painting department at the Estonian Academy of Arts. Her formal education includes a Master’s from the Painting Department of the Faculty of Visual Arts at the Estonian Academy of Arts. She has been awarded the Young Artist Prize (2011), the Sadolin Art Prize (2013), the Konrad Mägi Prize (2017) and the Estonian Cultural Endowment’s annual award (2021), and was nominated for the Köler Prize in 2016.

Kongi’s recent solo and duo exhibitions include Lost Summer Skies with Tõnis Saadoja at Pontone Gallery, London, UK (2024); The Past, the Present, the Future. It is like Indigo, Lilac, and Magenta at Galeria Karen Huber, Mexico City, Mexico (2023–2024); Colours reminded me that life can get so interesting that we forget to be afraid at roam, Berlin, Germany (2023); To Sense The Light, You Must Close Your Eyes with Mare Vint at Tartu Art House, Tartu, Estonia (2022); and … and Other Shades of Light with Krista Mölder at Tallinn Art Hall, Tallinn, Estonia (2021). Recent group exhibitions include White Dwarfs and All Those Beautiful Nebulas at Kim? Contemporary Art Centre in Riga (2024–2025), The Death Began In Autumn at CASA LÜ, Mexico City, Mexico (2023); Emotional Landscapes at Gallery Arka, Vilnius, Lithuania (2023); Colour as an idea. Thoughts on colour at ARS project space, Tallinn, Estonia (2021); Nocturnal visions. Pink cloud at Explorer building at Kai 1, Tallinn, Estonia (2021); and Frenetic standstill at GAM, Palazzo Madama, Torino, Italy (2020–2021).

Her works are a part of the collections of the Estonian Art Museum, Tartu Art Museum, European Central Bank and the European Patent Office, as well as private collections in Estonia and all over the World, including Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, England, Italy, Germany, USA and Mexico.