10/10/2016
On the 4th of November, 2016, the Baltic Young Artist Award was awarded for the first time, starting an annual tradition in Baltic cultural life. 53 graduates of the Baltic Art Academies competed for the award. The first Baltic Young Artist Award winner was revealed to be Estonian artist Juhan Soomets for his installation Artists’ Room.
Juhan Soomets (1975) was born and raised in Tallinn. In 2004, he graduated from Tallinn University with a degree in art teaching. He subsequently relocated to the village of Triigi in the north of Estonia, where, parallel to his artistic activity, he tends a garden, as well as keeping the district’s traditional carpentry skills alive, and teaching cybernetics and robotics twice a week at the local primary school. In 2014, he started studying at the Department of New Media at the Estonian Academy of Arts, from which he graduated this year with a Master’s degree. His creative output is characterised by combinatory games, combining the use of low-tech tools in his works of art with cutting edge technological innovations, and engaging the viewer as the most important player of all.
Parallel to this, the Baltic Young Artist Award public vote was convincingly won by the emerging artist Nojus Petrauskas with his work of art Altar. Chapter I. Almost 2,500 art lovers from the Baltic States, United Kingdom, Italy, Norway, Netherlands, France, Germany, Canada, the United States, Ukraine, Russia and other countries took part in the online vote.
