Jaanus Samma

Jaanus Samma (1982) is a visual artist based in Tallinn, Estonia. Samma’s critical exploration of queer desire, public space and cultural tradition spans installation, sculpture, drawing and textiles. His current fields of interest include history, ethnography and museology, as well as the narratives used at the intersection of these three. He is particularly known for his thorough exploration and reflection of gender and nationality, while aiming to locate queer subjectivity and desire in seemingly heteronormative spaces. Combining fieldwork, oral history and archival research, the artist responds to the absence of sexual representation through storytelling or semantic subversion, reclaiming loaded symbols and signs or inserting them into spaces where they seemingly don’t belong.

Samma is currently taking part in the DAAD residency program, Berlin. In 2015, he represented Estonia at the 56th Venice Biennale with his project “NSFW. A Chairman’s Tale”. 

Samma’s recent solo exhibitions include "Elisarion" with Elisar von Kupffer, Kumu Art Museum, Tallinn (2024), "Iron Men" curated by Krist Gruijthuijsen in EKKM, Tallinn (2023); "Still Lifes on National Motifs" in Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design (2022); "Otherness, Desire, the Vernacular" with Carlos Motta in Temnikova & Kasela Gallery, Tallinn (2021); "Museum Display", CFAlive, Milan,  "Outhouse by the Church”, curated by Eugenio Viola, Nomas Foundation, Rome (2018); “Not Suitable For Work. A Chairman’s Tale”, curated by Eugenio Viola, Museum of Occupations, Tallinn (2016).

His works have been featured in group exhibitions including "As Though We Hid the Sun in a Sea of Stories", HKW, Berlin,  34th Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts, Slovenia (2023); Survival Kit 14 Long-distance Friendships, Riga (2023); 14th Kaunas Biennial, Momentum 12, Galleri F 15, Moss (2023); Art in the Age of the Anthropocene, Kumu Art Museum, Tallinn (2022); The Latvian Collection, Malmö Art Museum (2022); "and suddenly it all blossoms", The 2nd Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art curated by Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel “There and Back Again. Contemporary art from the Baltic Sea region”, Kiasma, Helsinki (2018-2019); “The State is not a Work of Art”, curated by Katerina Gregos, Tallinn Art Hall (2018).