andrey bogush
speculative absences as queer care
Speculative Absences as Queer Care
FIX: Care and Repair, Design Museum and the Museum of Finnish Architecture, Helsinki, Finland
Commissioned by Design Museum and the Museum of Finnish Architecture
26.04. – 31.12.2024
curatorial intervention with invited artists Max Hannus and Ville Laurinkoski, and museum archives
including works from
Design Museum and the Museum of Finnish Architecture and Finnish Museum of Natural History, Helsinki
Jessica Andrey Bogush's work is an installation and a kind of alternative museum collection. Bogush examines the gaps and silences within the collections of the Museum of Finnish Architecture and Design Museum. What objects does the museum choose to include in its collection, and what does it leave out?
Friends of Queer History, Helsinki, Finland
List of works:
House mouse, taxidermy animal, 1940s, Finnish Museum of Natural History, Helsinki, Luomus collection
Patient's wardrobe, Paimio Sanatorium, designed by Aino Marsio-Aalto & Alvar Aalto, 1930s, Design Museum and the Museum of Finnish Architecture collection
HIV test kit, Labsystems, 1990s, Design Museum and the Museum of Finnish Architecture collection
Marilyn, lamp, Mikko Paakkanen, 2008, Design Museum and the Museum of Finnish Architecture collection
Memory House, Max Hannus, 2024, commissioned work
Ixe, Ville Laurinkoski, 2023, with mattress from the artist's home
Cat cut out (The living web of care is not one where every giving involves taking, nor every taking will involve giving*), Jessica Andrey Bogush, 2024, commissioned work
after María Puig de la Bellacasa, Matters of Care, 2017
15x20 cm drawings, under the glass, Jessica Andrey Bogush, commissioned work:
Method (after Kathy Acker), 2024
Tools and supports (for Kaija), 2024
Proposal for disciplined territory (for Rosa), 2024
Proposal for labyrinth (for Carol), 2024
Interview by Sandra Broborn, Hufvudstadsbladet, September 2024
https://www.hbl.fi/2024-09-10/jessica-andrey-bogush-lyfter-fram-det-osynliga-i-museernas-arkiv/
Jessica Andrey Bogush highlights the invisible in museum archives
From white speakers, a staccato sequence of French and English slogans rings out: Abuse of power, nothing to be learned, a homosexual view of the world, millions of people, we might go mad, followed by repeated cries. They utter the words: I cannot stop myself.
We are within the collection exhibition Fix: Care and Repair, visiting the intervention titled Speculative Absence and Queer Care (an invitation), curated by Jessica Andrey Bogush.
Bogush has examined archival material from the 20th century and was struck by how little documentation exists around the categories of queer and homosexual histories.
"The gaps within such a major art institution forced me to pay attention to the nature of absence," Bogush explains. "In reality, there are so many narratives from individuals who were deemed deviant throughout history and subsequently failed to penetrate the official collections."
In dialogue with the Architecture and Design Museum in Helsinki, Bogush has developed an alternative museum collection that addresses questions of marginalization and institutional exclusion. The exhibition consists of new interpretations of archival remnants alongside new works by queer artists. The walls are stark white and the artworks are few — literally illustrating the voids within architectural history.
Were you surprised by these voids?
"Yes. In Russia, where I was born, a project like this would not even be possible. But because such interventions occur within art institutions in cities like Berlin, I assumed there would at least be documentation of similar attempts to examine Finnish history through this lens. Apparently there was not."
Alongside their own work, Bogush included artists they have collaborated with previously: the Sipoo-born artist Ville Laurinkoski and the artist-researcher Max Hannus, who curated Kiasma's Dreamy exhibition last year. The intention behind including their work is to encourage the viewer to consider how the archive can be diversified through a queer methodology.
Queerness as a wide-angle methodology
Bogush, who identifies as queer, uses "queering" as an investigative approach precisely because it is currently absent from the record.
"There are very few research projects or exhibitions in Finland that tackle queer questions in direct connection to archival material. Personally, and on behalf of my artistic community, it felt vital to bring this to the foreground."
Bogush interprets queerness broadly. It is a norm-critical mechanism that illuminates the absence of — or the cost extracted from — specific objects, perspectives, or bodies in varying contexts.
"Queerness is also about the state of exhaustion. That kind of information is missing from the archives. Even if the names of the people are there, who decides and categorizes whether an artist was exhausted, or whether the work was a product of trauma?"
One example of the exclusion of specific bodies is a patient wardrobe from the Paimio Sanatorium, designed by Alvar Aalto and Aino Marsio-Aalto. According to Bogush, the wife's name has been omitted as a designer in several archival sources, which is why they explicitly sought to restore her name to the work.
There is also a queer symbolism in the decorative mouse placed inside the wardrobe.
"There are many living mice in the archives of the Architecture and Design Museum. But they are excluded from that space in a rather brutal way."
Bogush refers to the countless mousetraps placed throughout the facility. Animal motifs have long been characteristic of Bogush's practice.
"Animals can communicate very simple and very complex things to a broad audience. Perhaps it becomes easier to absorb messages about exclusion and extinction through the proxy of mice or cats."
The silencing of the sonic body
The slogans at the opening of this article come from Laurinkoski's sound work Ixe, containing popular-scientific French references connected to homosexual liberation in Paris in 1968.
To hear the sound work, one must stand directly beneath the speaker.
"It was extremely difficult to convince the museum that the sound level of the piece — which lasts five minutes — should be high enough to penetrate into the other spaces of the building."
According to Bogush, the volume was lowered following the exhibition's premiere in April.
"I don't know whether it is the voice in the work or the content that makes it uncomfortable. But the uncomfortable is also deeply queer — it is meant to be that way."
Following the opening, Bogush contacted the museum, which promised to restore the volume. To date, this has not happened.
"It is really sad that the institution has silenced the work without communicating this to us."
Too loud and unexpected
According to Kaisa Karvinen, the exhibition's curator, sound works are an anomaly for the museum. The volume was decreased after visitors reported the experience as too loud and unexpected.
"We were asked to lower the volume and to place a trigger warning at the entrance to the exhibition."
Karvinen emphasizes that the intention is not political — an act of silencing a group that has been historically suppressed — but rather a practical consideration for visitors and the other video works playing simultaneously in the museum's galleries.
"The work is very important and we commissioned it precisely to demonstrate the museum's responsibilities and possibilities," Karvinen says.
Karvinen concludes that it nonetheless becomes a matter of power when the museum chooses to prioritize other works at the expense of Ville Laurinkoski's piece.
"It is inevitable that the focus then shifts."
Following the interview (August 30), Karvinen contacted HBL to confirm she had reached an agreement with the working group: the volume will be raised during times when there are no guided tours in the adjacent spaces.
Interview by Sandra Broborn, Hufvudstadsbladet, September 2024. Translated from Swedish.
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