Unio Mystica: Medieval women’s visions and the virtual imagination

In October 2021, a unique one-off tour ‘Unio Mystica’ took place in Tallinn. It brought together mythologies and everyday stories of medieval women with contemporary mystical feminist narratives. The audience was immersed, through performance and virtual reality, in confounding somatic practices and fantastical worlds that drew upon different experiences of embodying femininity – in life and death.

The storytelling event ‘Unio Mystica’ concluded the two-month residency research of contemporary art curator Helen Kaplinsky at Tallinn Art Hall for international project Beyond Matter, exploring the virtual technological and mystical visions of women.

The residency is part of the large-scale cooperation project BEYOND MATTER – Cultural Heritage on the Verge of Virtual Reality, co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union and German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. It is dedicated to novel, digital approaches to exhibition revival, documentation, and dissemination, as well as the artistic, curatorial and museological development of the opportunities presented by virtual representation.