Flow of Patterns. Works of Jaanus Samma

Jaanus Samma’s work is known for queering seemingly harmless subject matters on national identity and representation through an exploration of sexuality and notions of ‘publicness.’ The concept of folklore also recurs throughout Samma’s work as a form of cultural circulation and exchange open to queer reinterpretation. By using traditional techniques, the artist navigates through various modes of communication, which at first seem innocent but on closer inspection reveal an array of gay and queer symbolism. Through archival research he has found ways of broadening sociopolitical perspectives on national and sexual identity by offering alternatives to recontextualize the past. Flow of Patterns is Samma’s first monograph and presents works from the past twenty years—from his graduation work on swimming pools to his recent exhibition, Iron Men, which scrutinized masculinity as a form of national representation. The publication is edited by Krist Gruijthuijsen with in-depth essays by Linda Kaljundi, Jeppe Ugelvig, and Léon Kruijswijk. 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 the intersecting narratives they entail. His work aims to locate queer subjectivity and desire in seemingly hetero-normative 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 do not belong.