“It is a Representation of What We All Need as a Queer Community”

The Transformative Power of Communal Queer Quilting at the Behemoth’s Centre, Estonia

Kirjoittajat

• Pauliina Lukinmaa University of Eastern Finland
• Alexandra Milyakina University of Tartu

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.23980/sqs.178001

Abstrakti

Crafting has traditionally been undervalued as an art form and dismissed by the mainstream. Yet, it increasingly serves as a powerful tool for subversion and revolutionary action, particularly within marginalized communities. Craft can foster community engagement, document political struggles, and archive experiences of underrepresented cultures and groups. As a creative, communal, less public, and long-term activity, crafting disrupts conventional LGBTQI+ activism focused on visibility and political struggles by fostering community and embodying a form of queer world-building. This article explores the meanings and values associated with two quilting projects undertaken at the Behemoth’s centre (Peemoti keskus in Estonian), a grassroots queer collective in Tartu, Estonia. The Rainbow Quilt and the Trans Remembrance Quilt were created in 2024 through the collective effort of over 45 participants. Using ethnographic research methods, we examine these processual, embodied, and relational creative initiatives as examples of craftivism. The quilting projects not only fostered a sense of belonging within the local queer community but also highlighted connections between the public and private, dominant and peripheral, Estonian and Other. Combining Juri Lotman’s cultural semiotics with our approach to craftivism, we analyse these connections to situate this localized queer activism within a broader transnational context.

Keywords: quilting, craftivism, grassroots activism, Estonia, queer archiving