Mari Laanemets is senior researcher at the Estonian Academy of Arts Institute of Art History and Visual Culture. Her research interests include 1960s and 1970s alternative art in the Soviet Union and its intersection with architectural and design practices, post-war abstractionism, and the aesthetics of modernisation in Eastern Europe.
She has studied art history at the Estonian Academy of Arts and holds a PhD from Humboldt University in Berlin. She is the author of the book “Zwischen westlicher Moderne und sowjetischer Avantgarde: Inoffizielle Kunst in Estland 1969-1978” (Berlin, 2011). She has edited several books: “Abstraction as Open Experiment: Sirje Runge, Dóra Maurer, Zofia Kulik, Falke Pisano” (Tallinn, 2019). She has published articles in ArtMargins, Centropa, Rethinking Marxism, Art Studies and various collections and exhibition catalogues. In 2023 she curated the exhibition “Forecast and Fantasy: Architecture without Borders, 1960s and 1980s” at the Museum of Estonian Architecture.