The exhibition Modern Love looks at love and human relations in the current age of the internet, social media and high capitalism – the first age of “cold intimacy”. The exhibition looks at how the digital world, technology giants and neoliberalism have changed love and social relations, while at the same time diluting the separation between the public and the private. The exhibition also looks at how the current issues of time and space have influenced the way we communicate with one another and how the virtual has become entwined with reality. These are still two quite distinct things, although the opposite is announced. Modern Love deals with human pathologies connected to the commodification of feelings and the negative expressions of love (e.g. love for money), and for comparison it also delves into meaningful and transformative forms of love, from the personal to the political. How to restore the place of love as a powerful emotional force and intense psychological bonds, which give meaning to our lives like no other mutually influencing “object” or experience can? How to protect love from the grasp of capital and corporate technology? How to fight against instrumentalisation, superficiality and vulgarity in commerce and social media?

The exhibition is produced in collaboration with Museum für Neue Kunst, Freiburg (Germany) and IMPAKT Festival, Utrecht (the Netherlands).

At Tallinn Art Hall, the exhibition will be open from 12 June until 5 September 2021.

Curator of the exhibition: Katerina Gregos

Participating artists: Gabriel Abrantes, Hannah Toticki Anbert, Melanie Bonajo, Laura Cemin, Benjamin Crotty, Marijke De Roover, Kyriaki Goni, David Haines, Juliet Jacques, Mahmoud Khaled, Lauren Lee McCarthy, Kyle McDonald, Maria Mavropoulou, Marge Monko, Peter Puklus, Margaret Salmon.