Kristina Norman - Hansa Connections

In Hansa Connections artist and researcher Kristina Norman (b. 1979, Tallinn, Estonia) explores the Western and Eastern European perspectives on the Hansa, together with historian and curator Linda Kaljundi. The project departs from this year’s  celebration of the 800 years anniversary of the Hanseatic League in the Netherlands. While the Hanseatic League is considered one of the most crucial parts of Northern European history of the Middle Ages, its remembrance also varies from country to country. The exhibition examines also the legacy of the Hansa from the perspective of contemporary issues with trade networks, hierarchies, and natural resources.

Hansa Connections departs from the engraving First Landing of the Bremen Merchants at the Mouth of the River Daugava. 1156 by Friedrich Ludwig von Maydell (1795 – 1846), who was coming from the ranks of the German-speaking nobility in the Eastern Baltics. From that image, Norman explores the colonial fantasies regarding the medieval colonization of Eastern Europe by the Germans and their uses in different contexts: in the Baltic German and the German nation building and colonial discourse, in the Estonian and Eastern European visions of joining Western Europe in the post-Soviet period, or in the ideas of the Hansa as a proto-EU. Representations of the Hansa have been a salient element in all these constructions. Bringing together politics, romanticism and trade economy, the exhibition also examines the close links between the legacy of the Hansa and tourism.

_{Reperforming the Hansa, work in progress. Photo: Meelis Muhu}

Hansa Connections also includes two parts of Kristina Norman’s film trilogy Orchidelirium, which was presented in the Estonian pavilion at the Venice Biennial in 2022. Orchidelirium is an immersive video installation that investigates forgotten historical and colonial connections between the Netherlands, Estonia, and Indonesia. The exhibition also comprises sculptures, objects from the Fundatie collection, installations and performative spatial interventions.

Creative collaborators: Märt Liivik, Meelis Muhu, Reimo Võsa-Tangsoo 

We thank: Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Kristian Garssen, Marje Kidron, Juhan Kreem, Tiina-Mall Kreem, Erik Norkroos, Kadi Polli, Hendrik Vahter, Heigo Varik (Katted24), Gemeente Zwolle.


_{Photo: Peter Tijhuis}

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