Listening to the Echoes of the South Atlantic Listening to the Echoes of the South Atlantic | Page 17

As an exhibition that addresses entangled colonial histories, it cannot go unnoticed
that Jeannette Ehlers’ Black Magic at the White House (2009) is presented in a
building that dates from 1626, a time when Norway was part of Denmark. In fact,
the connection to Denmark-Norway’s colonial past is quite relevant. Up until fairly
recently, the widely accepted narrative has been that Norway has no colonial past in
relation to Africa and the Caribbean. It wasn’t until 2017, which was the 100-year
anniversary of Denmark selling the Virgin Islands to the United States for 25 million
dollars in gold, that Denmark really began to acknowledge its own colonial past. The
fact that Norwegian shipping and industry profited greatly from the triangular trade
and the transatlantic slave trade has typically been dismissed under the excuse that
Norway was under Danish rule during the colonial era. To be clear, many Norwegians
were directly involved in the triangular trade between Denmark-Norway, The Gold
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Coast (Ghana), and the former Danish West Indies.
Jeannette Ehlers’ artworks confront Denmark’s (and Norway’s) colonial past directly,
asking viewers to question what it means to be an inheritor of colonial history.
Recently, she gained worldwide attention for her collaborative work with La Vaughn
Belle, I Am Queen Mary (2018). As the first monument in Denmark that addresses
Denmark’s colonization of the West Indies (1672 – 1917), its relevance within the
framework of Scandinavian decolonial discourse is unprecedented and is worth
mentioning within the context of this exhibition. I Am Queen Mary memorializes
the Crucian freedom fighter Mary Thomas, commonly known as Queen Mary, who
was an important leader of the ‘Fireburn’ labor revolt, which took place in 1878
in St. Croix. The ‘Fireburn’ was an uprising against the contractual servitude that
continued to bind workers to the plantation system after the 1848 abolition of
slavery in the former Danish West Indies. As its name suggests, this insurrection for
better working and living conditions involved burning down most of Fredriksted as
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well as sugar cane fields on a great number of St. Croix’s plantations. The massive
seven-meter high monument stands on a plinth composed of 1.5 tons of coral that
was imported from St. Croix, referencing the coral that was once cut by hand by
enslaved Africans and used in the foundations of buildings in the former Danish
West Indies. Positioned directly in front of the 18 th century warehouse that was built
for the Danish West India Company, it stands as an unprecedented visual reminder
of Denmark-Norway’s colonial history and is a beautiful act of empowerment and
resistance.
Jeannette Ehlers and
La Vaughn Belle,
I Am Queen Mary
(2018)
Photo: David Berg