Marika Agu

Marika Agu (1989) is a curator and archive lead at the Estonian Centre for Contemporary Art and based in Tallinn. Her curatorial practice engages with generative archival methods, while proposing symbolic and material shifts in the ways contemporary art is produced and perceived. Working primarily with printed matter and moving image—media that constitute a significant part of the CCA archive—she explores experimental approaches to presenting diverse formats and expanding their exhibition frameworks. She is trained in semiotics (BA, 2008), art theory (MA, 2012) and librarianship (2018). Alongside her curatorial work, she publishes articles and reviews in Estonian and international media outlets and serves as an associate lecturer at the Estonian Academy of Arts.

Selected curatorial projects include John Grzinich’ solo exhibition Field of Impermanence at the monumental gallery of the Tartu Art House (2026), the 19th Tallinn Print Triennial at the Tallinn Art Hall (2025); Can’t See, Sequences XI Art Biennial (co-curated, Reykjavik, 2023); screening series at Von Krahl Theatre (Tallinn, 2022); Kadri Liis Rääk’s solo exhibition Halcyon at NOW Gallery (Lima, 2022); archival exhibition Impression on Paper. Printed Matter from CCA’s Archive (Tallinn, 2020); Kiwa’s solo exhibition Self-Portrait as Unknown at the Tartu Art Museum (Tartu, 2015); group exhibition Estonian Street Artists (Tartu, 2012). In 2025 she was awarded with the annual prize of the Estonian Cultural Endowment.

Pirate Collection

Rather than understanding an archive solely through ownership, legal authority, or preservation, I propose to think of it through its capacity to generate new relationships. By looking at examples of exhibitions, screenings, publications, and research emerging from the archive of Estonian Centre for Contemporary Art, I will discuss how an institution without the mandate of a memory institution and often without the rights to disseminate its own holdings, can nevertheless become an active agent in shaping art history. In this sense, the archive operates less as a repository than as an ecosystem: a collection whose value lies not in possession, but in its ability to continuously produce new encounters, narratives, and forms of knowledge.

I propose the notion of the pirate collection to describe this condition: an archive that cares for, organizes, and activates cultural material without fully owning the rights to it. Rather than treating this legal ambiguity solely as a limitation, I ask whether it can also become a productive curatorial position – one that shifts the archive’s role from safeguarding the past toward enabling future encounters and new art histories.