Diāna Tamane

Diāna Tamane (b.1986) was born in Riga, and lives and works between Tartu and Riga. Her works are based on personal stories that mostly take shape through the collecting and assembling of her own daily experiences, impressions, habits and memories, as well as those of her relatives. To carry out this anthropological activity, the artist mostly uses stills and video, documenting the protagonists of her stories as well as their living spaces. In several of her projects, she has also used vernacular photography, memorabilia or keepsakes as source material. In the artist’s works, family albums, documents and private correspondence are transformed into catalysts, making it possible to reveal not only touching autobiographical stories but also apt portrayals of society and recent history. 

Tamane graduated from the Tartu Art College (BA), the LUCA School of Arts in Brussels (MA) and HISK post-academic residency programme in Ghent. Her works have been exhibited at Kyiv Biennial 2021, the first Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art, kim? Contemporary Art Centre (Latvia), Tartu Art Museum, Estonian Contemporary Art Museum (Estonia), S.M.A.K Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art (Belgium), Winterthur Museum (Switzerland), Kathmandu Triennale (Nepal), Surplus Space (China) and elsewhere. In 2020, APE published Tamane’s first book Flower Smuggler, which received the Recontres d’Arles Book Award and was shortlisted for the Paris-Photo Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Award.