#eka

TIMELINE

Exhibition at the library of the Estonian Academy of Arts

07.11.2025 – 19.12.2025

Artist: Sven-Aleksander Mantsik (MAKK24) Curator: Camille Laurelli

My first solo exhibition Timeline consists of autobiographical sketches on receipts, pinned to cork plates. Most of them were made during the past 7 years while I was working as a cashier, drawn for escapism while depicting real events. Besides the exhibition is a selection of books I recommend from the EKA library. 

The word “timeline” has various definitions – an order in which events happened / a social media feed / a plan / a theoretical branch of a multiverse / or in animation or video editing software, the long horizontal window which holds all the video clips or frames of animation and other media elements, visualizing where everything is placed in time. 

The works here follow a kind of emotional chronology: arranged not by when the drawings were made, but by the memories they represent, from childhood memories to sketches made very recently about recent events. 

I picked pin colors by whether the memory or sketch stresses me out or not:

Red – sadness and anger

Yellow – slightly less painful emotions

Blue or green – memories and sketches that make me smile

White – extra insignificant pins for holding up the sketch better

I make comic sketches because there are things that can only be written, not said. There is no way to make sense of my life other than through drawing and writing.

yes!!! im gonna give all of them a fav rn actually :3 the pets are excluded for obvious reasons

Josef: either a red fox or a great horned owl, but he loves all animals. theyre his special interest

Ake: cats

Jannie: mice

Gaspar: theyre very fond of elk

Rismus: dogs

Dr. Onyx: do moths count? if not, probably a tenrec

Dr. Parson-York: mountain lion

Pith: he would never, ever admit he likes anything earthly, but its sparrows

Josephine: snakes. specifically ball pythons

Kimmy: she likes plants more than any animal, but her favourite is, verbatim, "probably a dog or something"

Jamie: pomeranians, specifically

Ermine: dogs

Dr. Obsidian: centipedes. they will not submit a non-insect

Peel: servals

Lenka: deer

Mangrove: cuttlefish

Linseed: bat [obvious reasons]

Junimo: ferrets

Rowdy: zebras

Roughhouse: ostrich

Yuzu: flamingo

Damien: cows

Primmy: she says she loves them all equally, which is fair, since she can talk to them

Eka: bunnies [obviously]

Antimony: they dont really know any animals yet butthey probably like dogs

Mareena: she doesnt know many animals but she really likes Smok. so. whatever the fuck Smok is

Donovan: lemurs

Freak [the character]: uhhh cheetahs i guess

The Demon: sometting horrifying and fucked up and probably venomous. idk what