Just Art or Extremely Offensive? ‘Painful Cake’ Shows Screaming African Woman Being Cut & Eaten At World Art Day in Sweden
I know that art pushes boundaries, but when I first saw a performance art piece by black Swedish artist Makode Linde, I didn’t know what to think.
The art piece—a cake, shaped to look like “stereotypical African” woman with extremely dark, blue-black skin, “tribal” face paintings, dreadlocks, and neck-stretching rings—was on display in Sweden for World Art Day.
On the surface, the piece, dubbed the “Painful Cake” (the actual name seems to be “Clitoridectomy Cake“) could have been just a well-made sculpture of a tribal African woman made of cake. But what made the piece truly disturbing was the fact that as it was being cut (and eaten), the artist (whose face was painted to match the body) screamed in pain at every slice.
(Warning: the video might be disturbing to some)
It was such a macabre scene that I just couldn’t quite wrap my head around it. Add to it the fact that Sweden’s Minister of Culture, Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth–who has taken a hard line against racism in the country—was seen cutting into the cake with glee just blew me away.
Although many may brush this off as just a controversial piece of art, the fact that historically black bodies, and in particular black female bodies, have been dissected, disregarded, and put on display made me feel less like I was looking at a work of art, and more like I was watching Sarah Baartman being sliced to pieces.
What do you think of the ‘Painful Cake’? Is it offensive or just art?
*Photo via friatider.se
So offensive. Does the artist and minister and audience truly not get it? Why didn’t they understand immediately how horrible this is? How did they even get themselves to this place?
Racist, sexist, and just plain traumatically offensive.
They all need to listen to the intense reaction, they need to learn, understand, apologize, and make an attempt to make this right.
As far as a piece of art goes..
It gets the point across really well in a number of ways.
Firstly, while it is clearly wrong to be cutting away and devouring a person (representing a people and it’s resources), it’s delicious and you want more (it is cake afterall). This reflects the collonial attitude put towards africa by white folk. Doing it with no regard for the death and destruction brought forth but only by the sweet, delicious resources in front of them.
It also shows that people are still willing to do that, albeit in the context of taking part in an instillation meant to highlight how we treat one another both in a historical and modern context.
Secondly, It shows that we have grown to find it offensive and disgusting and wish it to stop, at least in words. That is, the outrage you can find online in regards to this piece. However, we still now pillage foreign resources through the free market, taking what is on the land of others, exploiting the resources and peoples and then keeping the profits for ourselves. Think, the gold mines of central america owned by barrack gold, or the oil fields of libya soon to be in part owned again by European nations, or even the TAR SANDS, a huge chunk owned by china and the united states… where the local population receives a pittance compared to their foreign owners / shareholders and so on.
Taking this into account without further consideration, and further consideration it probably deserves, it’s a very successful instillation in eliciting emotion and bringing to the forefront issues that are relevant even to this da
“Secondly, It shows that we have grown to find it offensive and disgusting and wish it to stop, at least in words. That is, the outrage you can find online in regards to this piece. However, we still now pillage foreign resources through the free market, taking what is on the land of others, exploiting the resources and peoples and then keeping the profits for ourselves. Think, the gold mines of central america owned by barrack gold, or the oil fields of libya soon to be in part owned again by European nations, or even the TAR SANDS, a huge chunk owned by china and the united states… where the local population receives a pittance compared to their foreign owners / shareholders and so on.”
Another very good point. It is amazing a what people claim to be offensive while remaining silent to the multitude to atrocities which we see and benefit from on the daily bases.
Great point LTD! :-)
it seems that EVERYTHING makode linde does involves pictures of minstrelry, blue/black faces with violently red lips showing far too many ultra white teeth, and then to look at his own photograph, could not help but wonder: is that his real hair or is it conked and straightened. whatever it is, hopefully, it is not a weave. nevertheless, it is quite clear that he hates his black self, or maybe he just hates the blackness that is within himself and wishes the white part of himself had been more dominant. it seems that sweden is his homeland; that, in itself, would be what has driven him to madness.
huh? he has locks in real life. long rasta-style locks. here he is in his full interview. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=gedEAfjmIzc
I don’t see how this artist hates his “Black self” or whatever. he’s clearly making a statement and it seems that both most readers of this site and the people in the video are completely missing the point.
Nothing artistic about this! I get being different, shocking, controversial…But come on…I am just so tired of this nonsense yet it won’t be ending any time soon…Strange Fruit for real…Ugh