Workshop with Ritni Ráste Pieski at the Wet Archives

The exhibition was curated by Aarni Juoksa Pieski for the Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki, and included the work of Ritni Ráste Pieski, in collaboration with photographer Lotta Hagelin, among other artists.

Widely known under his drag name, , Ritni Ráste Pieski shared with WEIRD the stories of the diverse Sámi drag characters, he and Lotta Hagelin brought on pictures. Ritni Ráste Pieski showed how drag can work as a political and creative medium to decolonize and queer western museum institutions, archive practices, and exhibition spaces - the pictures, framed in old reindeer wooden fences by artist Jouni S. Laiti, bringing unapologetic queer Sámi stories to the forefront.  

“The title of the exhibition emphasises the embodied nature of archives, referring to wetness, which can mean the secretions of the human body, documents soaked beyond legibility, or bodies of water that preserve knowledge.”

In the second part of the workshop, Ritni Ráste Pieski invited WEIRD researchers to reflect on their own research, positionalities and experiences with regards to archive practices.  What does it mean to queer, trans, non-binary and disability communities? Which and how disability, trans and queer stories, materialities, knowledges, bodies, are passed on, institutionality supported, accessible? How might this connect to questions of environmental justice? And most importantly, whose stories are not heard?

This article was written by the postdoctoral researcher of the WEIRD project Ely/iott Mermans.