The exhibition is held as a part of the Finno-Ugric Cultural Capital 2025 in Narva and the ethno-futurism festival.

Ethno-futurism is a future-oriented trend in culture that seeks to combine folk traditions and modern culture.

The exhibition "Road of Birds" is dedicated to myths about the origin of the world and the role of mythical creatures in it, and how these images manifest themselves in the work of contemporary artists of different directions.

In Finno-Ugric mythology, as in the myths of many other peoples, the creator of our world is often a bird (swallow, duck, raven, hawk, etc.), and the world emerges from an egg.

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The South is the land of birds, the land of warmth and light, and it is contrasted with the North, the land of darkness. These two lands are connected by a great river, and in the sky by the Milky Way, which in the evenings during March-April is directed from north to southwest and becomes the path of migratory birds. It is called the Road of Birds - Lintutie by the Finns, Linnutee by the Estonians. During these months, the Finno-Ugric peoples hold holidays dedicated to the arrival of birds and the expulsion of the Spirit of Cold. The images that are usually contrasted with the land of light are various monsters that embodied the forces of chaos and inhabited the original world ocean. The main idea of ​​the exhibition is to show the connection between ancient myths and the modern world and the revelation of creative powers through the fusion of the ancient worldview and its images with modern artistic interpretations.

Ancient myth-making can be an endless source of inspiration for artists of various directions. In some works, one can observe a direct following of the images of ancient myths and their interpretations, in the others, myth-making on the canvas is born from worldviews of their authors themselves based on the arsenal of their own symbols and images.

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We, artists, comprehend life through the comprehension of myths, through our understanding of the fundamental principles of the world and the movement along the path of birds to something cosmic and eternal.

The exhibition tells about nature and the harmony of a person with the world and environment, about the symbols through which one can see it and learn to create one’s own myths. 

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