About me

I take the symbols and rules we inherit and let them misbehave.

An ad promises a clean start. A china cabinet keeps beauty, propriety and family myths. A kitchen is where the perfect life gets staged. I leave the shape alone and change the behaviour.

I do it in oil, in quick drawings and on porcelain. A painting poses as a dog food ad. A drawing catches a pose before it moves. A plate carries a nude man onto grandmother’s table, or a woman who looks back. You can eat from the porcelain: at “Queens of Chaos”, visitors did, and then washed up.

My work is about how it feels to be told what to want.

I don’t offer new rules. I ask one question: why do I believe this means that?

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Katrin Valgemäe (b. 1979) lives and works in Tallinn. She works in oil, drawing and porcelain, taking everyday symbols of beauty, value and the good life (the ad, the china cabinet, the kitchen) and putting them where they stop behaving. She studied painting and ceramics at the Estonian Academy of Arts and painting at the Art Academy of Latvia. Solo exhibitions include “Queens of Chaos” (Myymälä2, Helsinki, 2023) and “Eat Fight Repeat” (Helsinki, 2026). Her work has been shown in Estonia, Finland and Lithuania and is in private collections in Europe and Taiwan.