Daily Reporter: August 23 and 24

Wednesday, August 23

Guest Speaker Karen Sivertsen, Aarhus University

Today, students were treated to a morning lecture with Karen Sivertsen from Aarhus University. Sivertsen has done significant research in exploring how each element of the colonial machine functions to make the colonial project succeed. The lecture focused on unraveling the binaries of colonization (e.g. colonizer/colonized, Black/White, oppressor/oppressed) in order to acknowledge and address the complexity of specific instances of colonization. 

This focus on uncovering differences in colonial contexts was an interesting contrast to the podcast that was assigned, entitled Uncovering the Legacies of Nordic Colonialism, and the panel discussion that was assigned, entitled Nordic Colonialism in the Caribbean. Both of these media sources suggest avoiding comparative colonialism approaches in order to avoid the subsequent inclination to designate some instances of colonialism as better or worse than others. Sivertsen presented an alternative perspective, in which a comparative approach may be useful for understanding the uniqueness of individual colonial contexts.

The complexity of this topic, and the problem of binaries, was demonstrated in the example of President Musevini’s apology to African descendants for slavery. This led to an interesting conversation on reparations and repatriation, which resulted in more questions than answers.

Caption: University of Washington students sit in a classroom at Copenhagen University discussing colonization and reparations with guest lecturer Karen Sivertsen of Aarhus University.

The National Museum of Denmark

After a lunch break, the students regrouped at The National Museum of Denmark. The exhibition students were instructed to view is called Voices from the Colonies. While the exhibition contained several artifacts from India, Ghana, St. Croix, and Greenland, the actual voices from the colonies were nowhere to be found. It was disappointing when compared to the immersive theatrical experience offered in the museum’s highly promoted Viking raid exhibition. The Viking raid exhibition reveals the humanity of the people committing atrocities, whereas Voices from the Colonies presents the colonized as historical ethnic subjects, in many ways “othering” the real people who were impacted and continue to be impacted by Denmark’s colonial actions. The details of the actual atrocities of colonization are treated as numbers rather than stories, and are more or less ignored.

Caption: In this photograph, there is an assortment of items showing modern urban India through colorful cheap goods on a cart. European structures, on the other hand, are shown in pure white colouring with classical architecture.

Caption: This image of Greenlanders Pooq and Quiperoq draw attention to traditional clothing and hunting methods. There is nothing in the exhibition on what life is like for modern Greenlanders, leaving the viewer with only romanticized images of the past from which to draw conclusion.

The case dedicated to Queen Mary is another example of how the exhibition falls short of giving a voice to the colonies. The Queen Mary display case summarizes the event she was involved in by saying: 

“In 1878 the plantation workers on Saint Croix rebelled. Plantations and large parts of Frederiksted were burnt to the ground. The leaders of the rebellion were subsequently executed or sent to jail.”

This reductive and oversimplified description overlooks the names of the four major leaders of this rebellion, and misses an opportunity to frame these actions as heroic and necessary. The powerful storytelling that was present in the Viking raid experience is completely absent here. That storytelling work is left for the artists who created I am Queen Mary, which students will see on August 24. In the meantime, it is worth questioning if the exhibition at The National Museum of Denmark offers Danes and other visitors any meaningful opportunity to reflect on colonial histories, and consider how they might approach reconciliation. 

Caption: This display case featuring Queen Mary does not do justice to the powerful woman and activist that she was, or the consequences she paid for her activism.

Opening Exhibition at The National Gallery: Jessie Kleeman’s  Running Time

Those of us who still had the energy to travel around Copenhagen attended an evening exhibition opening at the National Gallery of Denmark. Greenlandic artist Jessie Kleemann’s solo exhibition is called Running Time, and explores Greenlandic identity and Greenland’s modern social and political challenges. The work demonstrates how these challenges stem in large part from ongoing impacts of colonization as well as the growing impacts of global climate change. After failing to find voices of the colonies in the National Museum of Denmark, it was a welcome change of perspective to see such an impressive body of work from a Greenlandic artist. Students who didn’t make it to opening night will have the opportunity to attend one of Jessie Kleemann’s upcoming performances, or to visit the body of work that is being exhibited at the gallery.

Caption: The opening reception for Jessie Kleemann’s Running Time.

Caption: Jessie Kleemann’s new work entitled The Sledge on the Way.

Caption: Jessie Kleemann’s 2012 work entitled Orsoq. Orsoq is the Greenlandic word for seal blubber, which is what is contained in the glass jars in this piece.

Caption: Jessie Kleemann’s new work entitled Kamiit. These kamiks are 3D printed, and are placed over a layer of coffee grounds.

Wednesday, August 24

Royal Cast Museum and I am Queen Mary Installation Site

Queen Mary is the folk hero name given to Mary Thomas, who was one of the four main leaders in the 1878 labor revolt on St. Croix that is known as Fireburn. Queen Mary, along with the other three leaders, were eventually shipped to Copenhagen to serve a prison term. The site where they were imprisoned was one of the stops on the Voices in the Shadow of Monuments audio tour that students experienced on August 21. 

The I am Queen Mary monument is situated outside of the West Indian warehouse, a historical site that is also home to a massive collection of plaster casts of European sculptures. The monument was made by two artists: La Vaughn Belle of the US Virgin Islands and Jeannette Ehlers of Denmark. According to the website, these two women are “connected by their shared Caribbean roots and colonial histories.” We have been learning about Queen Mary throughout the course, and visiting the monument site and touching the coral stone base was a powerful experience. The statue of Queen Mary was destroyed in a 2020 storm, and the artists are working to raise money to build a more permanent structure, along with a companion structure in St. Croix.

Caption: The I am Queen Mary statue site. Before the statue was destroyed by a storm, it stood 23 feet tall, rivalling the copy of Michelangelo’s David that sits on the other side of the building.

Caption: A close-up look at the coral stone that forms the base of the I am Queen Mary statue. This type of stone was used for building foundations in St. Croix, and was likely extracted by enslaved people.

While visiting the warehouse, students were able to conceive of the scope of the monument even though the physical representation of Queen Mary on her chair is no longer there. A tour of the West Indian warehouse with curator Henrik Holm shed light on some of the social, political, and economic dynamics of the slave trade in Denmark, and the presence of the white plaster casts in the windows behind the empty platform where the Queen Mary statue used to be formed an apt metaphor. Students were also able to see a plaster cast of the King Frederick V bust, a copy of which was thrown into the harbor as an art activist demonstration that stood against King Frederick V’s role in the transatlantic slave trade.

Caption: Plaster cast bust of the Frederick V.

Concluding Thoughts

While the National Museum of Denmark struggled to reveal voices from the colonies in its exhibition of the same name, students in this study abroad program are finding that these voices exist in Denmark, but that they are difficult for the average person to find (especially when compared to popular royal Danish history, or Viking history). This course is proving to be immensely thoughtful in how details of Denmark’s colonial history are revealed to students through art, and provides meaningful opportunities for critical thinking and analysis with regards to whose voices are not only allowed to be included in public discourse, but also whose voices are amplified and celebrated the most. As the course concepts weave together with colonial history and the enduring impacts of colonization, distinct points of view rise up through the voices of people who have been harmed by Danish colonialism and imperialism.