Sweden is known for many things: IKEA, blonde hair, meatballs and being one of those forward thinking European countries that are just…well…European. You hear next to nothing about Swedes being pricks and dicks, so you can imagine why I was so caught off-guard hearing about the Minister of Culture cutting a cake in the shape of an African chick.
It sounded pretty ridiculous in more ways than one, so I looked into it and after scouring through countless, biased articles, I managed to find some that actually told the story. This led to the conclusion that the stunt was all for the sake of art and raising awareness of clitorectomies.
Yes, it’s far-fetched, but let me give you the facts, though it makes sense to do some research on your own seeing as this event was fairly recent and new information is constantly coming out:
Minister of Culture, Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth (who is a self-professed anti-racist) was invited to a tax-funded party at a modern art gallery to celebrate World Art Day. Makes sense seeing as she’s the Minister of Culture –so far, so good.
This is when Afro-Swedish artist Makoda Aj Linde comes in with a red sponge cake covered in black fondant all in the shape of a woman’s torso –genitalia included. Linde, who was in black-face, cut a hole in the table at the top of the cake, poked his head through and screamed whenever someone cut a piece.
Interestingly enough, the piece she cut was fed to the artist.
Once the pictures and videos were out, everyone lost their shit, grabbed their pitchforks and stormed the Bastille…or in this case, the internet which is actually a lot more populated than the Bastille was when it was stormed.
Everyone is pointing and wagging their fingers at Liljeroth –and the spokesman for the National Afro-Swedish Association is calling for her resignation.
Now allow me to play Devil’s Advocate...
Liljeroth is a politician. Politicians smile and nod because that’s what they have to do. Being a Minister of Culture, I’m sure there’s a lot of weird shit Liljeroth has to smile and nod to, and I’m sure she was prepping to do the same that day considering it was
a) World Art Day and
b) she was invited to a party at a modern art gallery.
We’ve all seen modern art: It’s random shit put together that the artist believes has some deeper meaning, but it’s really some overpriced hipster bullshit that makes no fucking sense. Given that Linde was the person who
a) made the cake
b) took advantage of the fact that a politician was there in order to
c) raise awareness of the practice of clitorectomies in Africa, the act in and of itself could be easily excused as art thus Linde could get away with it.
Not to mention the fact that Linde commonly uses black-face in his art. Look him up, you’ll see that he paints black-face cats, people, draws it on busts and what have you. It’s his thing.
I’m not saying that it was a good idea for Liljeroth to laugh at the situation, but I will say that the environment and occasion made Linde’s artsy stunt give the impression that it was racially and politically correct.
If anything, Liljeroth is guilty of doing her job. If people are ready to place her neck beneath the blade, they should also be prepared to do the same to Linde, the co-ordinator of the event (because chances are they were aware of what Linde was going to do) as well as the people who looked on, laughed, took pictures and videos and had a slice for themselves.
All the same, I personally think it was a provoking (albeit disturbing) stunt and just goes to show how ignorant the elite can be since this holds up a mirror showing the pervading ignorance people have in regards to human rights issues.
Regardless, we all know Liljeroth’s reputation isn’t going to recover from this and Linde will be selling his black-face art because bad publicity is good publicity.
At least Liljeroth lasted longer than her predecessor who resigned after 10 days as Minister of Culture.
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