Queer Archiving and Art

Programme

09.45
Doors

10.00
Welcome

10.15
What Makes a Queer Archive?

There is no single way to build, care for, or bring a queer archive to life. Some archives begin and stay in private homes, others grow into museums or community institutions, while many emerge through artistic practice, collective memory, or grassroots organising. Bringing together archivists, curators, artists, and researchers, this opening session explores the diversity of queer archiving practices and asks how different approaches shape what is remembered, preserved, and shared. Through short presentations and a moderated conversation, the speakers will reflect on the many possibilities, challenges, and futures of queer archives.

Speakers:
Peter Edelberg, Copenhagen University (DK)
Szymon Adamczak, QueerMuzeum Warszawa (PL)
Antti Kauppinen, Friends of Rainbow History (FI)
Anna Giertz, Archive of Pink Noises (SE)

Facilitator:
Viktorija Kolbešnikova, išgirsti Lithuanian Queer Archive (LT)

11.45 
Break

12.15
Queering the Archives with Arts

Where queer history is missing, the artists can visualise the gaps by imagining queer past based on the glimpses from the archives, from memories, fiction or art works from the past. In the Baltics, the artists with their work have led historians and other scholars to explore queer pasts, while the artists continue to boldly interpret and intervene in the found historical narratives. In this panel the artists tell about their practice and we discuss the challenges and pleasures of working with queer past today.

Speakers:
Maria Kapajeva, interdisciplinary artist (EE)
Emil Santtu Uuttu, dramaturge, performance artist (FI)
Anton Karyuk, interdisciplinary artist (LT)
Kārlis Vērdiņš, poet (LV)

Facilitator:
Rebeka Põldsam, curator, research fellow in ethnology, University of Tartu (EE)

13.45
Lunch break

14.45
Coming Out of the Archive

How can archives move beyond their shelves, collections, and databases to become active spaces for encounter, interpretation, and cultural production? This session brings together queer archives and collections to explore how they are activated through exhibitions, installations, history months, artistic collaborations, and other forms of public engagement. The presenters will reflect on how archives work with artists and cultural institutions, and how these collaborations can open up new ways of accessing, interpreting, and sharing queer histories. At the same time, such practices may challenge conventional ideas of what an archive is and where archiving takes place. Through short presentations and a moderated conversation, the session asks how queer archives can come out into the world — and how artistic and cultural practices might themselves become forms of archiving.

Speakers:
Augustas Čičelis, išgirsti Lithuanian Queer Archive (LT)
Olov Kriström, QRAB, Archives and Library of the Queer Movement (SE)
Anna Piispanen, Finnish Labour Archives (FI)
Runar Jordåen, Norwegian Queer Archive (NO)

Facilitator:
Pia Laskar, QRAB, Archives and Library of the Queer Movement (SE)

16.15
Closing remarks

Contributors

Szymon Adamczak (PL) is a dramaturg, writer, and theatre and performance maker working across disciplines. An alumnus of DAS Theatre and THIRD, an artistic research programme in Amsterdam, he works as co-director of In Pursuit of Otherwise Possibilities, a platform for queer performance pedagogy and feedback. Szymon is a founding member and programme coordinator at QueerMuzeum Warszawa and has a strong interest in contemporary practices of AIDS/HIV-oriented culture and activism.

Augustas Čičelis (LT) is a co-founder and co-curator of išgirsti, a queer project space, gallery, and Lithuanian Queer Archive, as well as a co-founder and director of the 13-year-old Vilnius queer festival Kreivės. Augustas holds a degree in gender studies and has been involved in social, cultural, queer, and feminist movements since 2006, working across the broader fields of social welfare, support, and self-expression.

Peter Edelberg (DK) is a teaching associate professor at the department of History, Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen. He is the author of several books and articles on LGBTQ+ history and the history of gender and sexuality. Over the past decade, he has worked to establish an LGBTQ+ Museum and Archive in Copenhagen, an initiative that has recently received support from the City of Copenhagen.

Anna Giertz (SE), based in Stockholm, works with illustration, visual communication, and sound art. Together with Johan Sundell and Birt Berglund, she runs the queer sound archive Arkivet för Rosa Brus (Archive of Pink Noises).

Runar Jordåen (NO) is a historian and senior academic librarian at Skeivt arkiv, the Norwegian Queer Archive. His research focuses on queer history in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly the criminalization of sex between men and psychiatric discourses on homosexuality.

Maria Kapajeva (EE) is an artist working between the UK and Estonia and exhibiting internationally. Her multidisciplinary practice engages with questions of identity, gender, memory, and belonging, with a particular focus on borderlands, transitional states, and marginalised or overlooked histories. In 2025, Maria received the Estonian Annual Award for Visual and Applied Arts. She is currently the recipient of a three-year artist salary awarded by the Estonian Ministry of Culture while completing a practice-based PhD at the Estonian Academy of Arts.

Anton Karyuk (LT) is a Ukrainian multidisciplinary artist based in Vilnius. He holds a master’s degree in architecture. In his practice, he explores marginalised segments of society, identities, and the dynamics of social ecology. His artistic practice engages dynamically with public contexts, fostering a deeper connection between art and society. In his visual narratives, Anton uses an abstract artistic language and minimalist forms, deftly moving between intimate and socially sensitive themes.

Antti Kauppinen (FI) is a cultural researcher, art historian, and leather gay. He is writing his doctoral dissertation at the University of Helsinki on the oral and visual storytelling traditions of the male fetish community MSC Finland – Tom’s Club. He has studied cultural studies, art history, and museology at the universities of Helsinki, St Petersburg, and Hong Kong. Antti currently works at the Helsinki Art Museum HAM. He is a long-standing human rights activist and currently serves as vice-chair of the Finnish Friends of Rainbow History Association.

Viktorija Kolbešnikova (LT) holds degrees in history and gender studies. She is a co-curator of the išgirsti Lithuanian Queer Archive and a team member of the Vilnius Queer Festival Kreivės. She is the head of communications at the Center for Equality Advancement and a council member of Social Center Emma in Kaunas. She is an active participant in feminist, queer, and labour union movements in Lithuania and across Eastern Europe.

Olov Kriström (SE), based in Gothenburg, Sweden, are a founding member of QRAB, the Archives and Library of the Queer Movement. With equal love for meticulous metadata and queer chaos, they work as QRAB’s collections coordinator, providing access to activists, academics, and artists wishing to explore the vast past.

Pia Laskar (SE) is a board member of QRAB, the Archives and Library of the Queer Movement. She holds a doctoral degree in the history of ideas and science and is an associate professor of gender studies.

Rasa Navickaitė (LT) is a researcher and senior lecturer at the Institute of International Relations and Political Science, Vilnius University. Her research focuses on LGBTQ+ history, homophobia and anti-gender movements, gender and sexuality in Eastern Europe, as well as feminist and queer theory. She holds a PhD in Comparative Gender Studies from the Central European University and has previously conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Vienna.

Jānis Ozoliņš (LV) is an assistant professor at the Art Academy of Latvia and a leading researcher at the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art of the University of Latvia. His current research focuses on queer representation and masculinities in contemporary Latvian art, the films of Gunārs Piesis, and anti-gender discourse in Latvia. He is also a composer and pianist and has released three critically acclaimed albums with his band Grupa Sigma.

Anna Piispanen (FI) is an archivist at the Finnish Labour Archives, where for the past nine years she has been organising queer-related archival materials and oral history collections, as well as conducting oral history interviews. The Finnish Labour Archives play a central role in preserving and documenting LGBTQ+ history in Finland, having collected queer archival materials since 2002.

Rebeka Põldsam (EE) is a research fellow in ethnology at the University of Tartu. She has studied queer art practices in Eastern Europe, queer history in Estonia, and LGBTQ+ ageing in Estonia. As a curator, she has primarily worked on art exhibitions and, more recently, has also curated exhibitions at various history museums in Estonia.

Emil Santtu Uuttu (FI) is a dramaturge and performance artist whose writing and stage works explore deep time, constant change, and pleasure, as well as the role of memory institutions and historical research. Emil’s first play, Ihana tytär Erika – Huomioita nimestä (Lovely Daughter Erika – Notes on a Name, translated by Roy Boswell), was awarded both the Archival Act of the Year 2023 and the Lea Prize 2024.

Kārlis Vērdiņš (LV) is a Latvian poet and the author of seven collections of poetry and four children’s books. His selected poems, Vidaus tvarkos taisyklės (2022), have been published in Lithuanian. He is a senior researcher at the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art of the University of Latvia and an assistant professor at the Latvian Academy of Arts.

The symposium is organised within the framework of the Nordic-Baltic Queer Archival Network as a collaboration between išgirsti, Lithuanian Queer Archive (LT), Skeivt arkiv, Norwegian Queer Archives (NO), QRAB, Archives and Library of the Queer Movement (SE), Friends of Rainbow History (FI), and individual scholars (DK, EE, LV), continuing NNAQH initiative. The event is partially funded by the Nordic Culture Point, Lithuanian Council for Culture, Vilnius City Municipality and Norway Grants.

Contact person: Augustas Čičelis, augustas@isgirsti.lt, +37068412216.