Teju Cole on Makode Aj Linde’s “Painful Cake”
There’s a growing controversy in Sweden over whether Culture Minister Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth should have smilingly cut into a cake in the shape of a naked black woman during a World Art Day event over the weekend.
Teju Cole’s response:
1. My friends know what they think about the “racist cake” in Sweden. I’m less sure.
— Teju Cole (@tejucole) April 18, 2012
2. There’s obvious symbolic violence in what’s going on. The video frightens.
— Teju Cole (@tejucole) April 18, 2012
3. But why shouldn’t things frighten? The fact that the artist involved—Makode Aj Linde—is black makes a big difference to me.
— Teju Cole (@tejucole) April 18, 2012
4. An artist takes us beyond the zone of our comfort, sometimes beyond what’s appropriate, and in so doing rescues us from a fatal civility.
— Teju Cole (@tejucole) April 18, 2012
5. Mark Steven Greenfield, Kerry James Marshall, Kara Walker, and Wangechi Mutu all make use of “inappropriate” imagery to say the needful.
— Teju Cole (@tejucole) April 18, 2012
6. Imagine the provocative tension between Greenfield’s blackface images and the white patrons sipping wine and viewing it in a gallery.
— Teju Cole (@tejucole) April 18, 2012
7. It perhaps echoes the tension created when a black rapper on stage hears a white crowd shouting the word “nigga” back at him.
— Teju Cole (@tejucole) April 18, 2012
8. Let the white hip-hop fan who’s never said “nigga” cast the first stone. Or the male rap fan who has never sung a misogynistic verse.
— Teju Cole (@tejucole) April 18, 2012
9. There’s a gender issue here, of course: Makode Aj Linde is not a woman. He has a black body but not a female one.
— Teju Cole (@tejucole) April 18, 2012
10. But Marina Abramović had a cake version of herself made, and was denounced for violence against women. (It was one of her tamer works.)
— Teju Cole (@tejucole) April 18, 2012
11. An artist’s duty isn’t to make you feel comfortable or safe. Her duty is to use discomfort to provoke you into a new headspace.
— Teju Cole (@tejucole) April 18, 2012
12. But for a different view, which I also agree with (I have more than one mind), see Johan Palme’s piece. africasacountry.com/2012/04/18/swe…
— Teju Cole (@tejucole) April 18, 2012