Laura Põld is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and curator working between Tallinn and Vienna. Her practice spans installation, sculpture, and craft, engaging with environmental history, feminist thought, and more-than-human entanglements. Through techniques such as ceramics, tufting, and assemblage, she reflects on material memory, ancestral knowledge, and acts of care. Weaving together folklore, ecology, and slowness, her work invites tactile thinking and poetic resistance.
Põld’s work has been presented internationally in major exhibitions and art fairs, including the Helsinki Biennial (Shelter: Below and Beyond, Becoming and Belonging, 2025), Rauma Triennale (2025), viennacontemporary (Ways of Being, 2023; Entanglements, 2024), Art Brussels (Fibers in the Cave, 2023), Liste Art Fair Basel (E-Motional Landscapes, 2022), and POSITIONS Berlin (Dirt is a record. Soil is an archive, 2021). Notable solo and duo exhibitions include She is Thinking About the Flammable Nature of Everything (LOOK! gallery, Riga, 2024), Common Threads (Kogo Gallery, Tartu, 2022), and Walking Talking Minerals (Titanik Gallery, Turku, 2021).
She has taken part in curated exhibitions at the Kumu Art Museum (Art in the Age of the Anthropocene, 2023), Tromsø kunstforening (Down in the Bog – Thinking with Peatlands, 2024), Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (shelter – sanctuary, 2023), and Zuzeum Art Centre (Growing Out? Growing Up?, 2022). Her practice has also crossed into scenography and performance, contributing to works at Kanuti Gildi SAAL and Sõltumatu Tantsu Lava in Tallinn.
Põld has been recognized with the Köler Prize Grand Prix (2016), the Cultural Endowment of Estonia’s Annual Prize (2014, 2018), and the Claus Michaletz Preis (2021). She is a two-time laureate of the Estonian Artists’ Association’s artist salary (2019–2021, 2023–2025). Her works are part of international collections, including the Art Museum of Estonia, European Central Bank Art Collection, Zuzāns Collection, and the State Art Collection of Upper Austria.
She has participated in residencies such as ISCP (New York), L’AiR Arts (Paris), Academy of Ceramics Gmunden, Maebashi Works (Japan), and Treignac Projet (France). Põld holds a Master’s in Sculptural Conceptions and Ceramics from the University of Art and Design Linz, a Master’s in Painting from the University of Tartu, and a BA in Ceramics from the Estonian Academy of Arts. She currently teaches at the Estonian Academy of Arts as Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Installation and Sculpture. Her curatorial and pedagogical work furthers her dedication to tactile epistemologies, feminist ecologies, and the unruly intelligence of materials.