#makode linde

Makode Linde, b. 1981 Painful Cake Sweden (2012) [Source], [Source]

This performance piece is a hell of a mess:

Linde's art became internationally known through an event at the Moderna Museet in Stockolm in April 2012. At the 75th anniversary celebration of the Konstnärernas riksorganisation (KRO) he had been invited to make the cake which he called Painful Cake. He decorated and made the cake in the shape of a black Venus of Willendorf, but with his own head in full black make-up looking like a stereotypical black person, a so-called "Golliwog". 

When the first piece of the cake was cut, a resemblance of female genitals were revealed with Linde screaming to give the effect of an actual black woman being cut. The scene was filmed with a video camera and the effect was increased by the fact that the person slicing the first piece of cake was the Swedish Minister of Culture Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth.

Some claimed racism in the depiction of the cake as an art piece and the event was reported to the Parliamentary Ombudsman. The Afro-Swedish society demanded that the Minister of Culture should resign. Linde claimed to have been misunderstood and explained that the cake symbolized how white people consumed black people, with the act of cutting off the cake's body parts and eating it.

För bara idén att göra en obehaglig tårta, bara i det ligger något väldigt kittlande för mig. Att ta någonting som är jättemysigt och göra något vidrigt. Det nästan bevisar någon slags teori eller idé jag har om att ju större dynamik det är mellan det här fina, gulliga, mysiga och roliga och det fruktansvärda... ju större avståndet är mellan dem i samma bild, desto mer reagerar i alla fall jag på det. 

Jag skulle säga att det är något jag verkligen gillar - bilder som är paradoxer. Man skrattar och skäms, ett nervöst skratt och man vet inte om det är okej. Och där, i den känslan, tror jag att en tankeprocess kan starta. 

(via What Makes Art Racist?)

Today, the European Network Against Racism (ENAR), a self-described “voice of the anti-racist movement in Europe,” released a statement titled, “Is art becoming the ultimate refuge of racism in Sweden and Denmark?”

Makode Linde in Intermission Magazine