Vitrine, 2025
4K video with sound
20 sec (looped)
Vitrine by Bob Bicknell-Knight is a 4K CGI video exploring ideas related to time and the symbolic power of statues. The focus of the work is a 3D scan of the controversial 1964 sculpture Vyachko and Meelis defending Tartu, encased in a rectangular glass box and placed within a pine forest that has been recently subjected to deforestation. Within the work the sculpture, which was widely used in the Soviet era as an example of Estonian-Russian historical friendship, is preserved in glass, transforming the statue, and its associated meanings, into an object that is safeguarded, yet simultaneously monumentalised and estranged. By placing the statue in the centre of a devastated forest, Bicknell-Knight is questioning what we collectively choose to protect within society, and in turn what we enable to disappear.
The work was originally commissioned for Meelis and Vyachko: Anatomy of a Myth, a day-long symposium at the University of Tartu Museum, Tartu, Estonia, on 10th October 2025.
Vitrine has been included in the following exhibitions:
– How to Reframe Monuments, curated by Linda Kaljundi, Kirke Kangro, Annika Tiko and Maris Veeremäe. At EKA Outdoor Gallery, Tallinn, EE, 1st December 2025 – 15th February 2026.
– Meelis and Vyachko: Anatomy of a Myth. At the University of Tartu Museum, Tartu, EE, 10th October 2025.
BOB BICKNELL-KNIGHT 