Wonderland
plaster molds, textile, readymade objects
In Wonderland, Sarah Nõmm reflects on Hotlips – the largest erotic store in the Baltics, and often the only “cultural landmark” people outside Maardu can name. Maardu’s identity stays vague in the wider Estonian imagination, yet Hotlips persists as a vivid, unexpected reference point.
The work approaches the store as a ghost-trace. Set on the Vana-Narva highway among truck parks and oil tanks, its placement amplifies both anonymity and symbolic weight: lust and gender as something performed, purchased, and packaged.At the same time, such marginal, half-empty places can function as informal refuges: spaces to exist without explanation, where identity can shift, hide or thrive.