I am a researcher, writer, and curator based in Tallinn. My research expertise is related to contemporary and modern art, memory and trauma, museum histories, practices of curating and narrating cultural difference.
Growing up in a family with origins in Estonia, Russia, Latvia and Poland has given me an appreciation of difference and consciousness of its workings in everyday life. I have studied art history and cultural theory in Estonia, Germany and Finland, and gained a PhD in cultural analysis in The Netherlands.
I have published articles and books, most recently “Absence and Difficult Knowledge in Contemporary Art Museums” (2018) and “Archives and Disobedience. Changing Tactics of Visual Culture in Eastern Europe” (2016, with Tanel Rander). Over the past years, I have organised several long-term collaborative projects acting as a project leader, moderator and a host, including “Communicating Difficult Pasts”. Currently I am affiliated with Tallinn University’s research project “Translating Memories: The Eastern European Past in the Global Arena” and the Estonian Academy of Arts by researching and conceptualising processes of decolonisation in museums and visual art, issues related to curation and mediation of difficult past in the context of Baltic histories and post-soviet histories memory cultures.