Jaanus Samma

Jaanus Samma is a visual artist based in Tallinn, Estonia. Samma’s critical exploration of queer desire, public space, and cultural tradition spans photography, installation, sculpture, and video. Samma’s current fields of interest encompass history, ethnography and museology as well as narratives used at the intersection of the three. His work aims to locate queer subjectivity and desire in seemingly heteronormative spaces. Combining fieldwork, oral history, and archival research, the artist responds to absences of sexual representation by way of storytelling or semantic subversion, as he recovers loaded symbols and signs or inserts them in 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”. In 2013, he was awarded the Köler Prize by the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia.

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); "Sõnumid – Viestejä", The Aine Art Museum, Tornio (2018); "Dialogue. Mare Vint and Jaanus Samma", KUMU Art Museum, Tallinn (2017–2018); “Not Suitable For Work. A Chairman’s Tale”, curated by Eugenio Viola, Museum of Occupations, Tallinn (2016); “Unrest", Gotlands Konstmuseum (2015) and "The Hair Sucks Sweater Shop", Tallinn Art Hall Gallery (2014).

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); "Queerly Classed", curated by Yevgeniy Fiks and Olga Kopenkina, Franklin Street Works, Connecticut (2017); “Masters Peasants Peasants Masters”, BWA Sokól, Nowy Sacz (2016); “Kunstnerbøger – Vildt Voksende”, Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen (2016); “Is This the Museum That We Wanted?”, Tartu Art Museum (2014); “Corporal Punishment”, Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia, Tallinn (2012); “Untold Stories”, Tallinn Art Hall (2011) and Luleå Art Biennial (2009)