Carlos Motta and Jaanus Samma. Otherness, Desire, the Vernacular

Carlos Motta’s (b. 1978, Colombia) multi-disciplinary art practice documents the social conditions and political struggles of sexual, gender, and ethnic minority communities in order to challenge normative discourses through acts of self-representation. As a historian of untold narratives, Motta is committed to in-depth research on the struggles of post-colonial subjects and societies. His work manifests in a variety of mediums including video, installation, sculpture, drawing, web-based projects, performance, and symposia. He is tenure-track Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Practice at Pratt Institute’s Fine Arts Department since 2019.

Jaanus Samma (b.1982, Estonia) is a visual artist. His body of work includes photos, installations and videos with topics grounded in gender and queer studies. His current fields of interest include history, ethnography and museology as well as the narratives used at the intersection of the three. In his most recent projects, he has explored the museum as a tool for establishing authentic histories and asserting cultural canons. In queering national heritage, he has found ways of broadening the perspectives on identity formation and offered alternative ways of contextualising the past. Samma’s practice relies on fieldwork – interviews and archive research – to produce subjective artistic output based on his findings.

Curated by Denis Maksimov.

Supported by Cultural Endowment of Estonia and Punch drinks