Swedish photographer and visual artist Jens Assur has spent ten months producing an exhibition of 40 enormous-size, large-format photographs chronicling structural patterns in the everyday life of twelve of Africa’s rapidly-changing urban centers, currently showing at the Liljevalchs konsthall in Stockholm. And by some coincidence, he’s gone for a title of similar intent as this blog’s: the […]
The tragic robber-hero. The mystical gunslinger. The cerebral crime-lord, drawn into events beyond his control. One of the most straightforwardly literal ways in which popular culture is able to challenge official ideology is in creating complexity and human drama around criminals that the state would rather have seen as villains whose only wish is evil. From […]
On September 25, one of Sweden’s most prestigious national dailies blew up an article on its front page about cultural director at Stockholm Culture House Berhang Miri (a Swede of Iranian descent) reshelving Hergé’s Tintin books because of their perceived colonial taint, generating heated press and internet debate. Surprisingly, the furore rages on three weeks later, which if […]
R&B singer-songwriter Wynter Gordon is taking a considerable step outside her comfortable mid-commercial range with her new single ‘Stimela’ and its self-directed video, but it’s hard to argue that it isn’t reeking of the worst type of structural World Music arrogance. It practically has it all: the cleverly metaphorical words from Hugh Masekela’s lament of migrant workers reduced […]
“It’s a self-portrait. It’s not meant to represent anything, except me.” Makode Linde seems more bemused than irritated when we discuss the huge, worldwide storm that his cake has stirred. “People are talking about this in Africa, in South America,” he says, “there are so many different interpretations of what it means, and I don’t […]
By now, it seems, the whole world has seen the picture. The Swedish Minister of Culture, Lena Adelsohn-Liljeroth, has just cut a piece from the crotch of a cake baked in the image of a distorted African body, complete with golliwog red lips and white eyes. Now, laughing heartily, she’s bent forward as if jokingly […]
