A macabre scene with racist undertones took place on Saturday when Swedish minister of culture Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth attended a tax funded party for the Stockholm cultural elite. The self-proclaimed “anti-racist” Liljeroth declared the party officially started by slicing a piece of a cake depicting a stereotypical African woman.
Photos from the party at World Art Day have already been released on Facebook and are now going viral in social media.
The shocking photos show several established left-wing members of the Stockholm cultural elite watching and laughing as Minister of Culture Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth slices a cake depicting a black African woman with minstrel-esque face.
Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth was invited to open the festivities by performing a clitoridectomy on the cake, which she did by slicing off the part of the cake depicting female genitalia. She then proceeded to feed that part of the cake to a performance artist, done up in blackface, his head protruding through the table.
More photos here.
For his part, the artist has invoked the “misunderstood” defence.
Following the backlash, artist Linde has spoken out in defence of his artwork saying the art installation, intended to highlight the issue of female circumcision, has been misunderstood.
“I think the people who have been upset misunderstood the intention or the agenda of me as an artist,” he told Al Jazeera’s The Stream.
Linde, who uses art to criticise stereotypes of black people added that the choice of the genital mutilation theme for the cake “was quite natural, as you would have to cut it up”.
But the event was branded a “racist spectacle” by the National Afro-Swedish Association.
Spokesman Kitimbwa Sabuni told The Local: “In our view, this simply adds to the mockery of racism in Sweden.
“According to the Moderna Museet, the ‘cake party’ was meant to problematize female circumcision but how that is accomplished through a cake representing a racist caricature of a black woman complete with ‘black face’ is unclear.”
Indeed.
To me, it looks less like female circumcision and more like organ harvesting. And we all know how some Swedes love that topic.
