Description
Features the experiences of African American artists in Nordic Europe
During the twentieth century, Black Americans visited and lived in Nordic countries, performing, studying, working, and seeking adventure, love, freedom to explore sexuality, and distance from Jim Crow segregation. Drawing from film, photographs, paintings, music, textiles, and dance, Nordic Utopia captures these journeys and ultimately reflects on how some African Americans have called and continue to call Nordic countries home. Calling on voices from hip-hop artist Jason Diakit? to novelist and essayist James Baldwin, this book tells how African Americans were transformed through their Nordic encounters. The authors examine how "hip-hop ethics" illuminate the dynamic meaning of material culture in contemporary Afro-Nordic lifeworlds. Documented experiences by migrant and visiting artists probe the peculiarity of being a Black person in a remote "white" place while also using these experiences to reflect on and critique American racism. The book considers what specific Nordic artifacts and materials reveal about the complexities of place-making for Black people in a region where notions of innocence, isolation, and distance from the issues of the wider world also abound.
Exhibition Dates:
National Nordic Museum, Seattle WA: March-July 2024
Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison: August-November 2024
Author: Leslie Anne Anderson
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Published: 08/13/2024
Pages: 112
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.92lbs
Size: 10.78h x 9.30w x 0.64d
ISBN13: 9798987929346
BISAC Categories:
- Art | American | African American & Black
- Art | History | European | General
- Social Science | Cultural & Ethnic Studies | American | African American & Bl