Flo Kasearu’s solo exhibition BANANA – Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone will be on view from March 22 to August 3, 2025.

The exhibition, curated by Kari Conte, explores the dynamics of public and private space through the lens of the NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) phenomenon. BANANA invites visitors to engage in discussions about urban and rural development, public participation, local values, and property rights. Offering visual, auditory, and tactile experiences, BANANA combines installations, paintings, video, photography, and sculpture to create narratives about the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion that define contemporary development and the complexities of land use.

In BANANA, Kasearu asks: What is a community’s responsibility to the greater good when development reaches its doorstep? At community boards and meetings around the world, neighbors debate what, where, and who can build—whether it’s housing, renewable energy, transportation projects, or other forms of infrastructure. Regarding specific proposals, some individuals align with NIMBY views, while others back YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard). Typically, NIMBY perspectives regard development as negative or harmful—regardless of whether this perception is justified—while YIMBY supporters see it as beneficial for society as a whole, although this is not always the case.

Over 50 newly-commissioned and recent works exploring these timely ideological and political disagreements are on display at Kai. Visitors will arrive at an imagined—though possibly real—community where notices are publicly posted, energy flows, surveillance intensifies, power lines are severed, views are obstructed, towering structures loom excessively, and neighbors contend with each other and their rapidly reshaped communities.

Flo Kasearu. Photo: Krõõt Tarkmeel

Joint tour with Flo Kasearu and Kari Conte (in English) will take place on Sunday, March 23rd at 2pm.

Flo Kasearu (b. 1985) is an artist based in Tallinn, where she lives and works in the Flo Kasearu House Museum, which she founded in 2013. She studied Painting and Photography at the Estonian Academy of Arts and Multimedia at Universität der Künste Berlin under Rebecca Horn studio. Kasearu’s work is seasonal and explorative, often beginning as an open-ended game. She values irony as much as aesthetics and is interested in themes such as private and public spaces, vertical versus horizontal relationships, and the interplay between the monumental and the unstable. Her projects have addressed topics like economic depression, patriotism, nationalism, domestic violence, and power relations. Recent exhibitions include “Host” at Stanley Picker Gallery (2023), “Flo’s Retrospective” at Kunsthalle Recklinghausen (2022), “Cut Out of Life” at Tallinn Art Hall (2021), and “Endangered Species” at Tartu Art Museum (2020), alongside notable group shows at Kiasma, Helsinki, and the Performa 17 Biennial in New York.

Kari Conte is based in New York and Turkey. She is a curator and writer focusing on global contemporary art, ecological thinking, and feminist perspectives. Currently, she serves as Residency Curator at Kai Art Center, Senior Advisor at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP)—where she previously held the position of Director of Programs and Exhibitions from 2010 to 2020—adjunct curator at City as Living Laboratory, and part-time faculty at Parsons School of Design, all in New York. Across more than 40 curated exhibitions, she has organized solo shows by Fatma Bucak, Alban Muja, Sonia Leimer, Chiara Fumai, Hikaru Fujii, Jennifer Tee, Eva Kotátková, and Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens, among others.
She has worked across numerous cultural contexts, leading collaborations with institutions from Mumbai to Beirut to Lagos. Her curatorial projects often explore migration, ecology, and labor, with exhibitions such as Aqueous Earth, which examined humanity’s impact on water systems, and Concrete Truth, a survey of lens-based works at the boundary of art and the documentary. Conte has been involved in biennials for the past decade, as an advisor for the Helsinki Biennial and as a guest curator for the Aichi Triennale and Performa Biennial. A Fulbright Senior Research Scholar in Istanbul, she has also held institutional roles at Whitechapel Gallery, the New Museum, and Artists Space. She has edited twenty books and catalogs, including Bringing Worlds Together: A Rethinking Residencies Reader and Mierle Laderman Ukeles: Seven Work Ballets.

This exhibition is supported by Cultural Endowment of Estonia, City of Tallinn, Inbank, Sunly, Färgfabriken and Akzo Nobel.