Jaanus Samma

Samma’s work aims to locate queer subjectivity and desire in seemingly heteronormative spaces: street corners, public spaces, and folk culture are mined and presented as ripe for sexual and sociopolitical re-interpretation. Combining fieldwork, oral history, and archival research, the artist responds to absences of sexual representation by way of storytelling or semiotic queering, as he recovers loaded symbols and signs or inserts them in spaces where they seemingly don’t “belong.”