Not Suitable For Work.A Chairman’s Tale–Jaanus Samma, curated by Eugenio Viola.
Study of Underwear, 2013 / 3.50
Jaanus Samma has focused his research on collecting stories of gay lives in Soviet Estonia. Sharing the same interest, the project Not Suitable for Work. A Chairman’s Tale draws from the life of Juhan Ojaste1 (1921–1990), a war hero and “family man”, who was a successful chairman of a kolkhoz, i.e. a collective farm in Soviet Estonia. In 1964, he was arrested and then expelled from the Communist Party due to his involvement in homosexual acts. A degrading trial was followed by a sentence of one and a half year of hard labour. Following the loss of his social status as well as his dignity, family and job, Ojaste was forced to move to a different town, where he could hold only menial positions. In the end, he was murdered by an alleged Russian male prostitute, a year before Estonia regained independence and homosexuality was decriminalised.
Collection of Estonia - Biennale Arte 2015
