Strong trigger warning for FGM, racism, and unspeakable callousness. I cannot be more serious: There is nothing but outrage here.
There is nothing okay about this.
On Sunday the Swedish minister of culture Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth cut in to a large cake shaped like a black woman as part of an art installation which was reportedly meant to highlight the issue of female circumcision. The event took place at Moderna Museet which reports say is party funded with public tax dollars.
Makode Aj Linde, the artist who created the installation and whose head is part of the cake cut by the minister, wrote about the “genital mutilation cake” on his Facebook page.
“Documentation from my female genital mutilation cake performance earlier today at stockholm moma. This is After getting my vagaga mutilated by the minister of culture, Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth. Before cutting me up she whispered “Your life will be better after this” in my ear,” the artist wrote on Facebook.
“According to sources Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth was invited to declare festivities open by performing a clitoridectomy on the cake, which she did by removing the cake woman’s labiums [sic],” reports Swedish news site Friatider.Se.
The cake isn’t actually “shaped like a black woman” as much as it is “shaped like the naked, disembodied torso of a black woman,” with Linde’s head sticking out the top. Photos show Adelsohn Liljeroth laughing as she slices cake from the bottom of the body and feeds it to Linde.
Both Linde and Adelsohn Liljeroth seem to think it was a hoot.
What did the minister of culture say to you when she was there? Was she hesitant about eating of the cake?
Makode: I didn’t clearly see her reaction, but judging from the pictures she was surprised when she realised that the cake was living. And before she put the knife into me, into the cake, she said “Your life will be better like this”. And when she put the knife into me I started screaming and begged her to stop. This was a part of the performance.