25.5.2024
Tanel Rander (1980) is an Estonian artist, curator and art writer. He has always been interested in tensions between subjectivity and its external influences. Since 2010, his work has been focused on East European identity and decoloniality. During the latest years, he has become interested in mental health, as well as therapeutic and reconcilable qualities of art. His latest solo exhibition was “Angelus Novus” (2022) in Hobusepea Gallery, Tallinn. His latest curatorial project is “Goodbye East! Goodbye Narcissus!” (2023), which focuses on East European collective psyche as a narcissistic constellation. The exhibition takes place in Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM)
One of Rander’s areas of focus is psycho-geography; in his work however, Rander removed the existing contextual specifics of the term, believing that identifying with the subjectivity of the western metropolis, in a post-socialist periphery, brings countless problems.
Rander has organised psycho-geographical expeditions, symposiums and seminars independently and in co-operation with different institutions in Estonia and elsewhere. In 2014 he curated an exhibition ‘Waiting for the Grey Ship’ (Y-Gallery, Tartu), which dealt with the fear that broke out during the war in Ukraine. In 2016 he curated an international group exhibition ‘Promised Light’ (Tartu Art House and Noorus gallery), which criticised knowledge as part of the enlightening mission of western modernity.
During 2017-2018, Rander was pursuing collective research in the border town of Valga/Valka, which concentrated on borders and the functionality of a shared town between two countries, Estonia and Latvia. The project was titled ‘A Hundred Poplars’, during which Rander organised and curated exhibitions, residencies, and initiated the independent exhibition space ‘Brivibas Galerija’. Brivibas means freedom in Latvian, and it derives from the central idea of the project – the joint town of Valgka. The project focuses on national identity between borders, and asks if and how this is expressed in the nation-state of a common border-town.
‘A Hundred Poplars’ has developed into a larger collaboration project titled ‘Transbordering Laboratory’, which deals with a Europe-wide network for border towns, to share experiences and knowledge, but also to create opportunities for mobility between different border contexts. The partners of this project are Michael Kurzwelly, who runs Slubfurt, and Nowa Amerika initiatives between the Germany-Poland border, and Miha Kosovel, who manages the self-initiated cultural centre Carinarnica on the Slovenia-Italy border.
Photo: Christian Rückert
