I am a researcher in museum studies, visual culture and cultural theory based in Tallinn. My research expertise is related to museum histories, practices of curating and narrating cultural difference, contemporary and modern art, memory and trauma.
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, before gaining a PhD in cultural analysis in The Netherlands.
I have shared my research in articles and books, including “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”(2019-2024) that also involved curating the exhibition “Difficult Pasts. Connected Worlds”. I have been affiliated with Tallinn University’s research project “Translating Memories: The Eastern European Past in the Global Arena” (lead by prof. Eneken Laanes) and currently work at the Estonian Academy of Arts as a researcher conceptualising processes of decolonisation in museums, visual art and culture, as well as issues related to curation and mediation of difficult past in the context of Baltic histories.