I was unlucky enough to be carrying around a piece of armor with "curse of binding" on it. I died, and it got equipped when retrieving my stuff from the totem. I killed myself in an attempt to unequip it, but it keeps re-equipping everytime.
I've also tried retrieving my stuff while already wearing a piece of armor in the same slot, but the curse of binding armor always gets equipped.

I just realized I could have probably killed myself twice after carefully reading the documentation: The first totem would have dropped its items inside, theoritically letting me pick my stuff back the usual way.

Marking as "closed" since the label "quick fix" was added and I found a way to make the first totem drop its content.