BIO

Tanja Hollander is an artist who works with photography, video, installation and social practice to understand how cultural and visual relationships. For the past thirteen years, her practice has looked at the many ways in which we build community both online as well as and offline. In her new body of work, The Ephemera Project, she is collecting images and stories that build an archive of the people we love and the objects that hold us together.

Tragically, her hometowns of Lewiston-Auburn are now among many communities around the country that have been devastated by mass shooting events. Since October 25, 2023, she has focused on making work that reflects the impact of the shooting on her community.  She is the lead artist collaborating directly with Maine MILL (Museum of Innovation, Learning and Labor) in Lewiston who are working to document and archive the community response to grief and trauma.

She was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1972 and received a B.A. in photography, film, and feminist studies from Hampshire College in 1994. Her last body of work, Are you really my friend? debuted in its entirety as an exhibition, short documentary and book for a year at MASS MoCA in 2017. Sections were recently exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Portland Museum of Art (Maine), Virei Viral (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), and the Carl-Schurz-Haus (Freiberg, Germany). Receiving international media attention for the project, Hollander was invited to give a TEDxDirigo talk in 2012 and has lectured extensively at The Women’s Leadership Conference (Las Vegas), Demanio Marittimo.Km-278 (Marzocca, Italy), the University of Maryland, Clemson University, SXSW, and Facebook headquarters. In her spare time she is a reproductive justice advocate. She lives and works in Auburn, Maine.

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