Kirikyyt Festival

Not every little town could be proud of its own art festival. Viljandi has got a biennale-frequency festival called Kirikyyt, organised by Artists Union of Viljandi. The first Kirikyyt took place in 1993. The main festival's principle is to present both local and national artists and art historians.

This year Kirikyyt was dedicated to the 'Free Style'. This is the other word for naïve art, proposed by art historian Sigrid Saarep who was the main curator of the festival this time. There are long traditions of the so called Free Style in Viljandi. The works of one of the most outstanding representative, Vaike Lubi were exhibited in the Museum of Naive and Outsider Art in Zwolle, Netherlands. She built huge buildings only from natural materials without buying anything from shops. Her and many others' naive architecture was exhibited in Krikyyt on large photos and slides.

The main exhibition had a very intriguing concept. There was a merge of artists whose works seem to be naive despite of their professional skills and education and those who work like professionals but have not studied art. Next to them the audience could find the Viljandi naive art classics like legendary master Paul Kondas.

One of the exhibition presented strange items from Soviet times when it was impossible to find trades of good quality on the market so people were very experienced in changing diffrent things. Those home-made goods pretended to be Western origin. On the exhibition one could see those home-made design, as well as weird and useless examples of Soviet industrial design.

During the Kirikyyt 2000 lots of shop were decorated with the reproductions of the world classics of naive art. In the central square the inhabitants and visitors could meet for instance big wood-carved animals. At nights young people gathered to see low-tech movies and video art. During the Free Style conference one could hear more about the artists having exhibitions on the festival.

The next Kirikyyt will take place in 2001. The theme is not know yet because Kirikyyt always meets the needs of contemporary times.