In Sweden, there is debate about the appropriateness of the performance "Torment Cake"

In Sweden, a scandal is erupting around the work of the Afro-Swedish artist Makode Linde “Painful cake”, shown last Sunday at the opening of the World Art Day exhibition at the Stockholm Museum of Contemporary Art.

Makode Linde staged a performance whose purpose was to draw attention to the problem of female circumcision, which is still practiced in many countries in Africa and the Middle East. The artist made a large chocolate-covered cake in the shape of a naked female torso, reminiscent of the body of an African aborigine, and stuck his own head into the hole in the table so that it seemed as if it were one with the cake.

Visitors were invited to approach the cake and cut off a piece from the lower abdomen - and the filling of the confectionery product was red. As soon as the visitor touched the chocolate glaze with a knife, the artist began to moan and sob very realistically, so that the cutter must have had the feeling that he was causing pain to a real living person.

However, in the video from the exhibition there is not a single frightened or alarmed face, not a single disgusted grimace; visitors to the vernissage calmly cut the cake and laugh. Among those who tasted the African confectionery was Swedish Minister of Culture Lena Adelson Liljeroth. She cut off the first piece and fed it to the author of the performance, thus symbolically feeding the depicted African woman her own flesh.

This act caused a serious public outcry: on blogs, people are outraged by the composure and cheerfulness with which the minister and other visitors to the vernissage cut a cake in the shape of a person. The Afro-Swedish Association has already declared this performance a racist caricature that humiliates victims of circumcision, and is demanding the resignation of the minister. The artist Makode Linde himself explains that his work was misunderstood, and Lena Adelson Liljeroth makes the excuse that she came to the exhibition to talk about the right of art to provoke, and therefore took part in the performance: “I cannot review art, but I understand very well that the situation as a whole was misunderstood.”

Maria Semendyaeva

Extremely scandalous flesh