EDWARD VON LÕNGUS (EE)

Edward von Lõngus is without a doubt the most famous of Estonian street artists. The first time he attracted public attention was in 2011 when he sprayed the images of homeless Tammsaare and Koidula on the streets. Adding to the mystery, Lõngus never reveals his face and, according to the artist, he doesn’t even exist in physical form. Instead, it's a theoretical concept shared by all, the age of multiple identity reflecting off the information field generated by the vibrations of our collective consciousness. When breaking auction records became too customary, he stunned the public by receiving state support as an illegal street artist to tour around Europe for two years. Lõngus likes to play around with cultural codes, every art piece is charged with relevant issues. The highest selling work of Lõngus fetched 13 050 euros.


KAIRO (EE)

KAIRO is a self-taught artist who considers 2009 as her starting point. As an artist she prefers the term naive artist as it aptly describes the abundance of colour and detail of her works, and a certain disinterest towards realistic depiction of anatomy, space, etc. Not to mention to signal the lack of formal art education. Kairo is known for covering the utility boxes on her home street in the Supilinn district with gorgeous paintings. It wasn’t an obstacle that she had to act without permission nor having a child and stroller in tow while doing it. She often depicts autobiographical scenes of financial struggles, clashes between self-realisation and motherhood, memento mori and her personal bearded male muse.


MÜRA2000 (EE)

müra2000, who non-celebrated his 10th anniversary last year, is known for his intricately detailed stencils. He likes cars, bulldozers, excavators and their destructive nature. His stencil piece depicting an excavator demolishing Tallinn Art Hall made its way into the Kumu Art Museum in 2012. Recently he has participated in auctions with his sculptural model cars. Read the interview with müra2000 from the second number of our Tartu Street Art Zine. 

K2rtE (EE)

k2rte is an illustrator, master of night time work and a coffee addict. She graduated from Estonian Academy of Arts in 2012 and has a BA in graphic design. Her work is inspired by psychedelic sci-fi art of the 70s, anime, comics and nature.
She has a hard time choosing a medium, so her illustrations can be seen on stickers, sneakers, walls, paper and mostly on your screen via Instagram where she posts her work and process.

GUTFACE (EE)

GUTFACE (Guts) is a low-brow artist residing in Tallinn but who’s many works can be found in Tartu as well. He mostly creates illustrations and so he approaches street art from that position, swapping paper for walls. GUTFACE is responsible for one of the most legendary rooftops in Tartu and recently he surprised fans with an animation where each frame was a sticker on the streets. He is fascinated with playing around with composition, form and symbolism and oftentimes he cites ancient mythologies in his works.


STINA LEEK (EE)

Stina Leek is a young and furious freelance artist, founding member of the art collective Ajuokse and the organiser of underground art gatherings. Her work is recogniseable by its thick and undulating graphic line and bountiful eyeballs. If she had to categorise her work stylistically, she’d go with low-brow art. Stina showed some of the older players how it’s done with her seven part street art comic strip the viewer had to piece together from all over Tartu. For her, street art is communication without direct contact and exposing face, every introvert’s dream. It’s communication with other street artists, the surrounding space and the people moving through that space. Stina stresses that both the visual elements she creates and the location picked for the piece have a meaning – sometimes you need to delve deeper, think along and maybe even seek them out. Although Stina’s relationship with street art is new and developing it’s clearly meant to be.