Swedish Culture Minister Refuses to Resign Over Bizarre Photo-Op

New York Times:

Sweden’s culture minister clarified on Wednesday that she has no intention of resigning over photographs of her taking part in a performance art piece on female genital mutilation, which featured a cake shaped like a stereotypical African tribeswoman that screamed when it was cut into.


Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth, the Swedish culture minister, cutting into a cake on Sunday at an art museum.Images of the minister, Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth, smiling as she cut into the cake at the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm on Sunday outraged the National Afro-Swedish Association, which described the performance as “a racist spectacle” and demanded the minister step down.

Ms. Liljeroth defended her participation in the event in a statement on the ministry’s Web site headlined, “Art Must Be Allowed to Provoke,” but also apologized for any unintentional offense she had caused and agreed to meet with leaders of the Afro-Swedish group on Wednesday afternoon.

Before that meeting, the culture minister’s press secretary, Karolin A. Johansson, told The Lede in a telephone interview that Ms. Liljeroth “would definitely not resign” for her role in an artistic event that celebrated “freedom of expression, the struggle against censorship and art’s freedom to challenge and provoke.”

Video of the event showed the central role in the performance played by the Afro-Swedish artist who created the work, Makode Linde. Mr. Linde, who told The Lede in a Skype interview that his work explores racist imagery through exaggeration, appeared in blackface as the head of the cake, screaming each time a slice was cut out of its abdomen.
Writing on the Guardian’s Web site on Wednesday, Jallow Momodou, a spokesman for the Afro-Swedish group, asked how the art work helped to draw attention to female genital mutilation because, “shockingly the artist chose to do this by means of a cake depicting a stereotypical black woman connected to the artist’s grotesquely blacked-up face.” He added:


The exclusively white audience cheered as the minister laughingly cut the cake around the ‘clitoris,’ and fed it to the artist. It is difficult to see how women who are victims of female genital mutilation, or black people for that matter, can benefit from this contribution to the degradation and humiliation of black women. /New York Times