Swedish culture minister Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth has been urged to resign over her role in art event supposedly highlighting female genital mutilation and racism.
Sweden’s minister of culture has been accused of racism after cutting a cake depicting a naked black woman.
Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth was taking part in an event at Stockholm’s Moderna Museet, the capital’s museum of modern art and home to works by Picasso and DalÃ. She was invited to cut the cake, an art installation meant to highlight the issue of female genital mutilation. She began, as instructed, by taking a chunk from the cake’s “clitoris”.
The artist, Makode Aj Linde, who created the installation especially for the World Art Day on April 15, took part in the cake-cutting, with his blackened face and head sticking up next to the cake’s “belly” and “arms”. The cakes “insides” were a gruesome red. A video shows him screaming loudly every time a visitor hacks off another slice of the cake.
Linde posted photos of the “genital mutilation cake” on his Facebook page. But the images provoked a furious response, with Sweden’s African-Swedish Association describing it as “a racist spectacle”.
A spokesperson for the association, Kitimbwa Sabuni, told Sweden’s The Local newspaper: “In our view, this simply adds to the mockery of racism in Sweden.”
The association has demanded her resignation. In response, Sabuni said the association doubted a “cake party” meant to highlight the issue of female genital mutilation had achieved its aim. Instead, the cake was just “a racist caricature of a black woman”. He said the minister’s decision to take part in a dubious event with “cannibalistic” overtones showed her “incompetence and lack of judgment”.
Sabuni told the newspaper: “Her participation, as she laughs, drinks and eats cake, merely adds to the insult against people who suffer from racist taunts and against women affected by circumcision.”
Adelsohn Liljeroth, however, said she sympathised with the association’s criticisms but denied she had done anything wrong. Speaking to the TT news agency, she conceded the cake installation was “provocative” and “rather bizarre”, and said she had been invited to speak about artistic freedom and the right to offend.
She added: “They wanted me to cut the cake.” Ultimately, the artist was to blame for any confusion, she said, arguing that the situation had been misinterpreted. “He claims that it challenges a romanticised and exoticised view from the West about something that is really about violence and racism,” she said. “Art needs to be provocative.”
Sabuni dismissed the remarks, according to Swedish media reports, and called the minister’s comments “extremely insulting”. He added: “Sweden thinks of itself as a place where racism is not a problem. That just provides cover for not discussing the issue, which leads to incidents like this.
“To participate in a racist manifestation masquerading as art is totally over the line and can only be interpreted as the culture minister supporting the Moderna Museet’s racist prank,” he said. —