Ann Pajuväli (1990) is an artist and illustrator with a background in printmaking. She mainly works with drawing and installation, often highlighting everyday objects and situations that are so mundane we no longer notice them. Her drawings develop into playful three-dimensional objects. Pajuväli is fascinated with how forms are universally recognisable – she creates abstractions of objects from the real world, balancing on a narrow line of identifiability.
Pajuväli has been exhibiting since 2013. She graduated from the department of printmaking at the Estonian Academy of Arts and her graduation project “Pick One Thing, Anything” (2017) was awarded the academy’s Young Artist Prize. Pajuväli exhibited an artist book, containing textual and visual poetic riddles, framed by an installation of a minimalist wooden construction or kiosk, forming an impressive symbiotic whole.
In 2018, Pajuväli had a solo exhibition at Draakon gallery, titled “Surfaces of Impact and Soft Landings”. The exhibition was made up of colour pencil and digital drawings, and installation objects; the abstract geometrical forms resembled elements of sports grounds. Pajuväli conceptualised surfaces of impact as stubborn obstacles, which in the gallery space were arranged as still lifes. Adapting to the surfaces of impact visualised in the drawings, she created abstract objects, evoking soft landings.
Pajuväli is simultaneously working on several ongoing series of digital drawings, capturing fragments of the artist’s everyday life in a slightly out of sync manner. In 2019 the artist began the series “Home”, depicting domestic scenes and moments of rest, poetic images of plants or food. Characteristic to Pajuväli, these objects have been lifted out of their natural habitat, instead appearing before the viewer on a blank background and ignoring the rules of perspective, making ordinary objects strange or remarkable. The series “Going by Curves and Angles” (since 2019) focuses on observations on the surrounding environment, depicting, for example, playgrounds or parks deconstructed into fragments, shifting the sense of space by using various planes.
The park motif is also at the centre of “Over the Edge, Around the Pond” (2020), first shown at the 7th Artishok Biennale at the Kadriorg Art Museum. The installation is made up of a 2.6 metre drawing and concrete curb stones. The work was inspired by the central plan of the Õismäe district in Tallinn – the blocks of flats create a circle around the park with the pond at the very heart of it. Pajuväli’s piece juxtaposes the plan of the Õismäe district and the baroque park design of Kadriorg.
In 2021 Pajuväli had an exhibition at Hobusepea gallery “Spring Express” (together with Misa Asanuma). The show included drawings, ceramics, concrete objects and installations made of found objects, speaking about longing to be somewhere else and the creation of fictional worlds. The exhibited works referred both to everyday objects as well as playful imaginaries. Pajuväli presented digital drawings and installations, placed in a dialogue with Asanuma’s ceramics and found object works.
Ann Pajuväli graduated from the printmaking department of the Estonian Academy of Arts (MA, 2017; BA, 2015). In spring 2017 Pajuväli’s Master’s project “Pick One Thing, Anything” (2017) was awarded the academy’s Young Artist Prize. Pajuväli’s illustrations regularly appear in the cultural newspaper Müürileht.