Alissa Nirgi (b. 1993) is a young photo artist who lives and works in Tallinn and sees the world through the eye of a documentalist. Her work mainly addresses the issues of deprivation and isolation, combining verite with fictional content for increased impact. In her series of photographs, Nirgi succeeds in fusing aesthetic and colour-saturated form with personal content that has the capability of touching on broader political topics.
Estonian Photographic Art Fair displays a work from Nirgi’s project “A New Land Outside My Window” (2015). It depicts the story of her sick grandmother from Luhansk, who was forced to flee the war and settle in Estonia. As Nirgi doesn’t speak Ukrainian or Russian, she has rather limited possibilities to help her grandmother adapt. A project that started as a simple observation became, over time, a more important part of the interaction between her and her grandmother. We see her grandmother waiting and hoping for good news regarding the end of the war so she could return home.
