Join Jeannette Ehlers (Denmark\/Trinidad), Ellen Nyman (Sweden), and La Vaughn Belle (St. Croix) for three events in a series of conversations on\u00a0the aesthetics of decolonization. These artists will discuss how their art practices\u00a0across different media are designed to provoke conversation about colonial legacies and contemporary racial politics on the ground in Sweden, Denmark, and St. Croix.<\/p>\n
In recent years, artists\/activists in Denmark, Sweden, and St. Croix have been at the forefront of movements to acknowledge and reckon with Scandinavia\u2019s colonial history and the relation of this history to racial imaginaries and modes of national belonging in Europe and the Caribbean.\u00a0 The year 2017 marked the 100th<\/sup> anniversary of the end of Danish rule in the Danish West Indies, which then became known as the US Virgin Islands; the occasion was marked in both Denmark and across the US Virgin Islands through commemorations and celebrations<\/a>\u2013<\/u>as well as attendant critique<\/a>\u2013<\/u>on both sides of this divide.\u00a0 Since 2010, there has been what some scholars are calling an \u201cAfroSwedish Movement\u201d or \u201cAfroSwedish Renaissance\u201d in which Swedes of African descent are demanding that Sweden abandon its mythology of exceptionality when it comes to the European perpetration of the slave trade and imperialism and acknowledge its own role in the slave trade and its aftermath (Swedes built the Cape Coast \u201cslave\u201d castle in Ghana, owned St, Barth\u00e9lemy (St. Barts) in the Caribbean for nearly 100 years, participated in the savage exploitation of the Belgian Congo).\u00a0 AfroSwedes are doing this even though they do not hail directly from this colonial intervention; instead, they understand that the way black people and black cultures are apprehended in contemporary Sweden results, in a large part, from the lack of acknowledgement of this colonial imaginary of race and blackness in Sweden. These conversations are important parts of a larger reckoning across the Nordic countries with race and their racialized pasts, as Iceland is currently in the midst of re-evaluating their engagement with its \u201cfirst black citizen,\u201d<\/a><\/u> Hans Jonathan, an enslaved man who escaped his owners in St. Croix and fled to Iceland in the early 1800s. In their artistic and scholarly work, Ehlers, Nyman, and Belle have been creating vital conversations about the necessity of creative confrontation of these histories and the aesthetics of freedom and domination.<\/p>\n These events are\u00a0organized by\u00a0Monica L. Miller, Associate Professor, Departments of English and Africana Studies, and Tami Navarro, Associate Director of the Barnard Center for Research on Women, with generous support from the Weiss Fellowship for Visiting International Fellows, co-sponsored by BCRW.<\/p>\n Imagining Race in Scandinavia: Panel Discussion ATTEND<\/a><\/p>\n Faculty Seminar and Luncheon RSVP to Tami Navarro at tnavarro@barnard.edu<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Artists’ Presentation All events are free and open to the public.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n About the Artists<\/strong><\/p>\n Jeannette Ehlers<\/strong> is a video, photo and performance artist based in Copenhagen, Denmark. For years she has created artworks that delve into ethnicity and identity inspired by her own Danish and Caribbean background. Her pieces revolve around big questions and difficult issues, such as Denmark’s role as a slave nation\u2014a part of the Danish cultural heritage, which often gets overlooked in the general historiography. She has exhibited and performed in such institutions as AROS, \u00c5arhus, Denmark; the Museum of Latin American Art, Los Angeles; the International Slavery Museum, Liverpool; the McKenna Museum of African American Art, New Orleans; Nikolaj Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center, Denmark; and, the P\u00e9rez Art Museum, Miami. For more visit her website<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\n<\/b>Tuesday, March 5, 6\u20137:30 PM
\nFeaturing Jeannette Ehlers, Ellen Nyman, and La Vaughn Belle, moderated by Monica Miller
\n<\/em>Event Oval, Diana Center, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Wednesday, March 6, 12\u20131:30 PM
\nFeaturing Jeannette Ehlers, Ellen Nyman, and La Vaughn Belle\u00a0<\/em>
\nBCRW Conference Room, 6th Floor, Milstein Center, 31 Claremont Avenue, New York, NY 10027<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Thursday, March 7, 6 PM
\nFeaturing Jeannette Ehlers, Ellen Nyman, and La Vaughn Belle, Moderated by Tami Navarro
\n<\/em>Digital Humanities Center, Ground Floor, Milstein Center, 31 Claremont Avenue, New York, NY 10027<\/p>\n