Airi Triisberg

Airi Triisberg is an independent writer, curator and educator based in Tallinn. She is interested in the overlapping fields between contemporary art practices and movement politics. Her interests include issues related to gender and sexualities, illness/health and dis/abilities, self-organisation and collective care practices, struggles against precarious working conditions in the art field and beyond. She often works at the intersection of cultural practice, knowledge production and self-organisation.

One of her ongoing interests is focused on struggles against precarious working conditions and art workers organising. In 2010-2012 she was active in the art workers movement in Tallinn. During her curatorial fellowship at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Leipzig, she initiated critical conversations about art economy with the event series I Can’t I Have to Work. In 2015, she published the book Art Workers – Material Conditions and Labour Struggles in Contemporary Art Practice together with Minna Henriksson and Erik Krikortz. This book conceptualises recent practices of art workers organising in various locations of Europe.

Another strand in her practice engages with issues of body and dis/ability, illness and health, affect and care. In the frame of this research interest she is organising exhibitions and events that reflect on historical and contemporary moments when the experience of illness and disability have been politicised in order to express social critique. In 2015 she curated Get Well Soon!, an exhibition presenting artistic re-articulations of social imaginaries rooted in the radical movements of the 1970s. 

Currently she is doing research about political biographies in Eastern Europe.