SHE BUILT NYC: CITY UNVEILS FIVE PRELIMINARY ARTIST PROPOSALS FOR SHIRLEY CHISHOLM MONUMENT IN PROSPECT PARK

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 27, 2019

Contact: publicaffairs@culture.nyc.gov; 212-513-9323

SHE BUILT NYC: CITY UNVEILS FIVE PRELIMINARY ARTIST PROPOSALS FOR SHIRLEY CHISHOLM MONUMENT IN PROSPECT PARK

Based on these proposals, a final artist will be selected in early April through the City’s Percent for Art program

Brooklyn, NY – Today, the City released five preliminary artist proposals for a new monument honoring Shirley Chisholm in Prospect Park, the first artwork being commissioned as part of the She Built NYC initiative to bring more monuments honoring women to New York City’s public spaces. The public is invited to comment on the proposals online at women.nyc through Sunday, March 31. 

“Following the Mayoral Monuments Commission report, we committed to expanding the people, stories, and voices represented in our public monuments,” said Cultural Affairs Commissioner Tom Finkelpearl. “We were thrilled to announce Shirley Chisholm as the first person honored, and we’re excited to get a first look at what these artists are envisioning for this lasting testament to Chisholm’s trailblazing achievements. We invite all New Yorkers let us know what they think and help shape this landmark contribution to NYC’s public space.”

"The contributions Rep. Shirley Chisholm made to this country are immeasurable," said Faye Penn, executive director of women.nyc. "The She Built NYC statue honoring this trailblazer is a way for New Yorkers to thank her for advocating in the halls of power on their behalf. We look forward to hearing feedback from the public and thank the artists for their moving representations of this American hero."  

“Shirley Chisholm, a true daughter of Brooklyn, born of West Indian immigrants who settled in Bedford-Stuyvesant, was one of this nation’s greatest dreamers. A monument of this magnitude, dedicated to the first person in 192 years to embody the triple threat of being Black, a woman, and a representative of Congress, is most deserving of this lasting recognition. It is long overdue,” said Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams.

"I am absolutely delighted to see the preliminary renderings of the installation that will honor Shirley Chisholm in Brooklyn. It can't be said enough how truly groundbreaking and courageous Shirley was. Whether running for president or opposing the Vietnam War, Shirley stood by her convictions, not what was politically expedient. We all owe Shirley a huge debt of gratitude -- it is so very meaningful that she is the first woman to be recognized through the long overdue She Built NYC initiative," said Council Member Helen Rosenthal, Chair of the Committee on Women.

Shirley Chisholm is the first monument announced as part of She Built NYC, an initiative to construct public monuments honoring the New York City women who have changed history. The effort kicked off with an open call for nominations in June 2018, and from these public nominations, Shirley Chisholm was selected and announced in November 2018 in recognition of her role as a political trailblazer who was both the first black Congresswoman and the first woman to seek the Democratic presidential nomination. The monument is anticipated to be completed by the end of 2020 and will be installed at the Parkside entrance to Prospect Park in Brooklyn.

The five preliminary design proposals from the artists are (all images courtesy of the artists):

Firelei Báez

Artist Statement

The monument to Shirley Chisholm proposed by artist Firelei Báez is comprised of a series of hand-painted metal columns that collectively shape-shift into three respective portraits of the trailblazing legislator and first African American presidential candidate. Like a lenticular panel whose image changes when viewed from different angles, from each of three vantage points, this traversable forest of flower-like posts will transform into varying representations of Shirley Chisholm. As the viewer walks around the sculpture, the partial images painted onto each of the posts’ three sides will coalesce into distinct portraits when viewed from specific perspectives. Each of the three portraits represent a different aspect of Chisholm’s public role and accomplishments.

Báez creates Chisholm’s three representations incorporating hand-painted imagery tied to inherited Afrodiasporic narratives. Two of the portraits liken Chisholm’s characteristics to those of Orishas, human embodiments of elemental spirits from the Yoruba tradition, while the third incorporates the Pan-African flag. When viewed aerially, the beams of Chisholm’s monument are arranged into the form of Sankofa, the West African symbol of a bird which reaches back to move forward and construct our future.

The proposed monument will be an accumulation of hand-painted, vertical steel columns, each measuring approximately 10-15 feet in height and anchored into a poured concrete foundation covered with pavers. A point of inspiration for this sculpture’s form is the monument to Nelson Mandela in Howick, South Africa.

La Vaughn Belle

Artist Statement

This proposal reinterprets Shirley Chisholm’s famous quote, “If they don’t give you a seat at the table bring a folding chair” and positions it into a larger framework of mobility. This monument invites visitors to not only think about Chisholm’s personal journey from childhood to elderhood, but also the movement of a people and a nation. For what her historic run for the presidency challenges most is our imaginary of what is possible. Wearing a turban and an eagle pin, she steps boldly into a re-envisioned version of the presidential seal. She challenges us to think about how this petite black woman with a Bajan accent marking her immigrant roots, could represent the promise of the United States both literally and symbolically and how her trail -to use her campaign slogan- could “bring U.S. together”.

Tanda Francis

Artist Statement

While many were beginning to organize the fight for America to live up to its promise that "all men are created equal", Shirley Chisholm's trailblazing life prompted us to consider the equality of all of humanity.

Chisholm Trail Memorial is a bold and timeless dedication to Shirley Chisholm, supported by her own powerful words. Her inspiring quotes are embedded into the ground of the sidewalk leading to the Ocean Avenue entrance of Prospect Park. This trail tempers visitors to the mindset of this great woman as they approach her monumental bronze representation framed by vertical jets of water and light. Chisholm Trail is a colossal dedication which the people of New York City and the world will seek out and know of our commitment to honoring the women who helped build New York.

Mickalene Thomas

Artist Statement

Prospect Park is known as Brooklyn’s Backyard. The sculpture that inspires me is one that reflects the breadth of Shirley Chisholm’s impact and also illustrates her as a woman who was deeply in touch with the people of the Brooklyn community.

In the current political and cultural landscape, art is about accessibility and immersive experiences. Rather than portraying Shirley standing at a podium and speaking down to her audience, this model will instead show her rooted in the peoples’ space and speaking to their truths.

Shirley’s figure will be created at human-scale and seated at the viewers’ level so that audiences can engage with her. The car on which she’ll sit not only captures a moment in time, but it also emphasizes the social relationships of the community – this will be a space for people to congregate. The surrounding environment will have dual purpose benches/planters and in them the plant life will be selected to reference Shirley’s Caribbean heritage.

By employing a nontraditional sculpture to depict a nontraditional force, the monument is meant to highlight the fortitude of both Shirley Chisholm and the people she represents. This is ultimately about the visibility of everyone in the community.

Amanda Williams & Olalekan Jeyifous

Artist Statement

We have created a monument to Shirley Chisholm that celebrates her legacy as a civil servant who “left the door open” to make a space for others to follow in her path toward equity and a place in our country’s political landscape. Depending upon your vantage point and approach to the Ocean Avenue entrance, you can see Ms. Chisholm’s silhouette inextricably intertwined with the iconic dome of the U.S. Capitol building. This mashup symbolizes how she disrupted the perception of who has the right to occupy such institutions and to be an embodiment for democracy. This trailblazing woman was not diminutive. This monument represents how Chisholm’s collaborative ideals were larger than herself. The ground plane is carved in a shape that mimics the amphitheater like style of Congressional seating. Each seat pays homage to those who came after Ms. Chisholm as well as leaves room for those who have yet to come.

Images of the five proposals are available for download here. All images are courtesy of the artists. 

These five artists were selected at an initial Percent for Art panel in January 2019. Following the public feedback period for these preliminary proposals, a second Percent for Art panel will select a finalist, who will then refine the design before presenting to local community boards and submitting it to the Public Design Commission later this year. Up to $1 million will be available for the commissioning of the monument.

This monument will be installed as a part of Prospect Park Alliance’s $9.5 million restoration of the Parkside and Ocean Avenue perimeters and entrance to the park, which is made possible through $6.7 million in funding by Mayor de Blasio, $2 million in funding from Borough President Eric L. Adams and $750,000 in funding from Council Member Dr. Mathieu Eugene. This large-scale restoration by the Alliance will include new sidewalks and paving, new historic lighting and street furniture, the planting of new trees and the addition of a protected bike lane.

She Built NYC started with an open call asking the public to nominate women, groups of women, or events involving women that significantly impacted the history of New York City. Through the women.nyc website, the public submitted nearly 2,000 nominations. Ninety-eight percent of respondents said they would like to see a woman honored who was committed to social reform or justice. The most frequently used word in the submissions was “first,” followed by “leader” and then “advocate.” An advisory panel with individuals representing a broad range of expertise and backgrounds helped refine the public submissions list and provided recommendations to the City.

Earlier this month, the City announced the next four women who will be honored with public monuments, bringing the total of monuments initiated through She Built NYC to five, with one in each borough. She Built NYC is an initiative of women.nyc, which was launched in May 2018 by First Lady Chirlane McCray and former Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen to ensure that New York remains the best city in the world for women to succeed.

The launch of She Built NYC followed a report issued by the Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers in January 2018, which led Mayor de Blasio to order actions on a number of its recommendations. Most critically, the report called for adding more voices and broader representation to the City’s collection of public art to better reflect its diverse history. Other efforts underway in response to the Monuments Commission report include “Beyond Sims,” which is commissioning new artwork for the former site of the J. Marion Sims statue along the edge of Central Park in East Harlem. The statue of Sims was removed in April 2018 following years of community advocacy.

About women.nyc

When women succeed, the greatest city in the world becomes even better. Women.nyc is a groundbreaking initiative that not only inspires women to advance their careers, but also provides them with the real tools they need for success. From free expert legal advice, to networking and mentorship, to financial assistance, women.nyc offers a growing portfolio of resources for working women. Join women across the five boroughs and make your #nycpowermove with the help and support of women.nyc.

About Percent for Art

Since 1982, New York City's Percent for Art law has required that one percent of the budget for eligible City-funded construction projects be spent on public artwork. Managed by the City’s Department of Cultural Affairs, the Percent for Art program has commissioned hundreds of site-specific projects in a variety of media—painting, new technologies, lighting, mosaic, glass, textiles, sculpture, and works that are integrated into infrastructure and architecture—by artists whose sensibilities reflect the diversity of New York City. Learn more at www.nyc.gov/percent. 

Writing Out Of The Margins: Selected Footnotes On Det Sorte Kapitel

In response to the film Det Sorte Kapitel (The Black Chapter) which premiered on September 29, 2018 I have many complex thoughts and feelings, but I will begin by giving some context. During the weeks leading up to the film there was a mounting sense of anxiety and confusion as I began to see the trailer and press package information emerge. I had also received communication that the premiere and panel discussion I was invited to attend as one of the key characters in the documentary would be in Danish, even with the push back of how language has functioned as a way to isolate and narrow the dialogue around colonial history. Instead of on the panel, I was placed in the audience with a translator as I watched a disjointed, pain-filled and confusing discussion about the experiences of people of color in Denmark. I sat there silent trying to understand the translator, trying to process the film I had just watched for the first time, wondering why I hadn’t seen it before and awkwardly coming to this conclusion: that in real time I was experiencing what it felt like to be written into the margins of history. This was very different from looking at the colonial archives and searching for invisibilized narratives of the enslaved and colonized of which much of my artistic practice entails. I was looking at an archive being created in front of me, in which my story had been written out, even though the record- in this case the film- evidences that I was there.

The challenge is that the film’s premise, at least how my engagement was secured, was a film that would follow the I Am Queen Mary project, a multi-year public art work between myself and the Danish artist Jeannette Ehlers whose first phase was inaugurated on March 31, 2018. This project garnered worldwide attention, being covered in over 100 media outlets in over 15 countries with an estimated reach of 1 billion people. Engaging the press in such an intentional way was an artistic and political strategy based on the knowledge of the importance of the narrative as a decolonial tool. So in addition to many hours of conversation since the film’s release with both Jeannette and the film director Maya Albana I present selected footnotes on the film Det Sorte Kapitel to extend the conversation to include the challenges in doing decolonial work.

I first became aware of this film project in 2016 when Jeannette told me that her friend, a filmmaker, had received funding to make a film that would follow her along the process of creating a memorial around the centennial. This memorial project was in its infancy, however, the film presents itself as capturing its birth in the scene of Jeannette standing in front of the Danish West Indian warehouse and declaring that she would make a sculpture there of a large black woman. This is not the beginning of the I Am Queen Mary project. Depending on where you place the coordinates this project has many beginnings and depending on how you frame the beginning dictates how you shape the narrative that follows.

One could argue that I Am Queen Mary began around 2008 when Jeannette and I both had opportunities to travel to each others’ homelands. I made my first trip to Denmark and experienced the incredible erasure of the former Danish West Indies in the collective Danish narrative. This sharp contrast to the inescapable reminders and visual remnants in the Virgin Islands led to the investigation of these material artifacts of the colonial period in my practice. On this first trip I was working with a Danish curator, Jacob Fabricius, on another transatlantic exchange project and met Jeannette at the artist talk of the exhibition. That trip changed the course of my work dramatically as it began to focus on our colonial past with our longest colonizer, Denmark. During that same year Jeannette made her first trip to both the Virgin Islands and Ghana which deeply impacted her practice and created a similar shift. She began to investigate her own country’s colonial history through her perspective of being a black Dane, often using her body as a vehicle and making diasporic linkages. Separately, on either side of the Atlantic we began a parallel trajectory of working with issues of colonialism from our respective geographies and biographies.

However, one could also argue that I Am Queen Mary began in 2014 when Helle Stenum, a Danish migration researcher and professor conceived of the Warehouse to Warehouse project for the upcoming Centennial anniversary of the sale and transfer of the Virgin Islands from Denmark to the United States in 2017. This was to be a transatlantic conversation through exhibitions and other programming housed inside the warehouse in Copenhagen and the one in Christiansted on St. Croix. It was Helle who also wanted to raise the funds to commission two memorials that would have the theme of mobility and she asked both me and Jeannette, as the leading artists from our respective countries working with these issues, to interpret this theme in anyway we saw fit. My initial response to the proposed memorial was a sculpture of coral stones encased in plexiglass which I entitled Trading Post.These stones came from my properties but were originally harvested from the ocean by enslaved Africans and form the foundation of most of our colonial era buildings. They represent the invisibilized labor as they are often placed on top of Danish bricks and not seen until the building is in ruin. They also represent the true basis for the wealth of Denmark, the labor and lives of the Africans brought to the colonies. Jeannette’s response was transforming the image of the persona she creates in her Whip It Good performance into a sculpture of a large black woman and place it in front of the Danish West Indian warehouse as a counterpoint to Michelangelo’s sculpture of David that was already there. In conversations with Jeannette, Helle suggested that a homage to Queen Mary might be an appropriate figure to memorialize and Jeannette then decided to recast her Whip It Good persona as Queen Mary.

In another beginning I Am Queen Mary originates in 2016 when Jeannette and I first entered into dialogue around the memorial project. Jeannette was in St. Croix filming for another work she was doing on Hans Christian Andersen’s theater play The Mulato. By this time the Warehouse to Warehouse project had collapsed as the museum operating inside the warehouse had closed and the chief interpreter at the warehouse in St. Croix had left his position. Also by this time Jeannette had applied for funds that were made available by Danish agencies for the upcoming Centennial year and had received them. When I first saw the mock-up of her proposed memorial I had some concerns. We were able to discuss them when I invited her to my home for dinner. This conversation was the beginning of our transformative dialogues that led to a deeper understanding of our different positions and ways of seeing and which form the basis of the project I Am Queen Mary.

We discussed in depth her Whip It Good performance piece and I explained how using Queen Mary, our national icon and hero would be met with controversy regardless of the image used, however that aligning Queen Mary’s narrative with what I viewed to be a fetishized image of herself in Whip It Good was highly problematic. Jeannette disagreed with this interpretation of her piece. However, she did eventually agree to not use the whip as this was an instrument of torture and in the context of this history and what Queen Mary represents could be seen as a colonial version of a revenge fantasy. I suggested instead replacing it with the cane bill and the torch which were the primary tools of resistance used in the 1878 Fireburn and in many of the revolts in the Caribbean including the Haitian revolution. They are also worker’s tools that originally have functioned in the colonial project to dominate the landscape and convert them into plantations. By displaying these tools as weapons the subversive nature of converting colonial tools into tools of resistance could also be referenced. These were issues that I had been working with in another project entitled Cuts and Burns in my attempt to create a visual vocabulary around these ideas. All of this was and more were discussed that day and form the basis for another origination.

A few months after the meeting at my house Jeannette contacted me with the suggestion to combine our two projects via a brief Skype call. This alternate beginning is an important one because this moment speaks to many of the issues that the film positions itself to talk about, how the structures of power and privilege that are born in the colonial project are complex and implicate everyone. These systems and structures are mostly invisible yet infiltrate our most intimate spaces of desire, friendship and collaboration. Most importantly, because these structures are systematic we often find ourselves participating in them without intention. So although I agreed to the collaboration, it was not without reflecting on some of the structural imbalances embedded in our positioning in the world and our relationship to these systems. I was concerned first by the fact that my project Trading Postwas rather understated in comparison to the bombastic nature of placing a two-story black female figure in the public space. Being that I was from the Virgin Islands and this was one of my initial contributions to the project, I was worried that it would be a reenactment of the same invisibilizing of our narrative that the project was contesting. I was also concerned about the framing of our collaboration. Did Jeannette invite me into her project? Or did we enter into a collaboration? With the project now occurring in Denmark and Jeannette being the one who was ultimately responsible for the money, did we enter into the collaboration on equal footing? Would Jeannette feel that she had more of a voice because of these imbalances? And more importantly, would I? It took many months, many conversations and negotiations, me moving my entire family to Denmark for three months, on top of numerous other trips where I left them behind for our collaboration to develop and become solidified. Unfortunately, the film shows very little of this process. Very differently from the film project I believed I was a part of, the film’s narrative transformed into centering the friendship of two Danish non-white women, who have known each other since childhood, but whose friendship becomes threatened by the increasing racial consciousness of one, and the yearning of the other to understand. The film follows Jeannette’s journey through her artwork and begins and ends with Whip It Good, with I Am Queen Mary being a way station.

The history of several beginnings that I have articulated speaks to the power and significance of positionality. In the historical “black chapter”, in comparison to the Virgin islands, Danes continue to operate in a space of power in which they craft the narrative, because they have the resources and the institutions to do so. This is why a project that started out as two sculptures morphs into one that is located in Denmark. When thinking about the colonial project which has centered European narratives while marginalizing the voices of those who were colonized, one would have hoped that someone attempting to narrate any part of the story of I Am Queen Mary, would have taken these issues of geography and biography into account. This is the aspect of Danishness that is left unanalyzed in the film, although it is definitely commented on in one of the two scenes taken from the Virgin Islands. In the scene from the open forum that took place in July 2017 where I present the project for the first time in St. Croix there was a lot of debate over this positionality. As I explain to Jeannette in the scene that follows, “They see you as Danish. It doesn’t matter that you are black.” Although not in the film, I also explained that there is a “Danishness” that was critiqued in the lack of engagement and research done prior to our collaboration. There was a concern that once again the Danes are taking our stories and centering themselves in them by taking Queen Mary to Denmark. This is why hybridizing our two bodies to make the figure becomes an important aspect of the piece in an attempt to create a bridge. The work then functions as a platform by which these issues can be interrogated, exposed, and discussed and we use our bodies, our nations and our narratives to do so.

Although I am aware that it is radical in Denmark to have a film that centers the narratives of two non-white Danish women, I lament that the choice to do so further replicates the centering of Danish narratives while marginalizing those of the former colonized. As I watched the film for the first time at the premiere, I wondered about what it would have looked like to have widened the coordinates to have included: discussing the Warehouse to Warehouse project; to have imaged my studio and the work Trading Post; to have seen the coral stones lying in the ruins, or any of the myriad colonial structures that are we are left to live among in the former Danish West Indies; to have had the juxtaposition that I too lost a parent in this journey, that I too am a mother and that my children were often there in our meetings; or to have even a mention that in the midst of this project we suffered two category 5 hurricanes in the Virgin Islands. Admittedly there was a pain in watching my narrative reduced so much that I barely recognized myself. However, I Am Queen Mary is at its core a decolonial project. Decolonial work is not neat or linear. It is painful, messy and at times fraught with contradictions. But it is necessary. It requires each and every one of us to look hard at the ways in which we participate in this system and continue to uphold its policies, values and ways of imaging. Perhaps in the way Det Sorte Kapitel best functions is it gives us something by which to really see the complexities of this process and how difficult it can be. How despite friendship, despite good intentions, despite color, how the legacies of colonialism entangle us all. It is often the responsibility of the marginalized to signal their marginalization which adds an extra burden. Yet, part of decolonial work is to make visible these structures, to search for the ways we are implicated and compromised, and to write ourselves out of the margins.

Also published on Medium.com on October 26, 2018.

Artist Talk at Prizm Art Fair: I AM QUEEN MARY with La Vaughn Belle and Jeannette Ehlers

It was exciting to participate in my first art fair in December 2017, Prizm Art Fair, a satellite fair during Miami Art Week/ Art Basel Miami. Me and my collaborator Jeannette Ehlers were honored to present an artist talk about out monumental project, I AM QUEEN MARY. During the fair we exhibited a 50 centimeter prototype of the sculpture and a series of photographs based on the merging process of our two bodies.

"I Am Queen Mary", La Vaughn Belle and Jeannette Ehlers

Prototype of "I Am Queen Mary" at the Workers Museum in Copenhagen

La Vaughn Belle and Jeannette Ehlers at Prizm Art Fair, Miami December 2017

Here is the artist talk on youtube. 

Solo Exhibition | Peachcan Gallery | January 12-Feb 28, 2018

Peachcan Gallery January 12- February 28, 2018 Artist Talk, February 1, 2018 Possessions | La Vaughn Belle

Chaney (we live in the fragments) _009,48"x60"

Having changed colonial hands seven times, the longest being Denmark and the last being the United States, the Virgin Islands has a long history of being a possession. During this time people, products, memories, stories, cultures and languages were transferred and transformed. There are countless reminders of this process and history. From the names of our towns after Danish royalty, the sugar mills in various stages of ruin that populate the hillsides, to the “chaney” that continues to be found on many properties, often surfacing after a hard rainfall. Historically, children rounded these broken pieces of pottery and used them as play money, a type of imagined currency. A morphed version of both "china" and "money", “chaney” serves as a reminder of our colonial past and fragmented Caribbean identities. However, these shards also tell the visual stories of power and projection and how cultures saw each other and themselves in this vast transAtlantic narrative. Similar to how we have reconstructed our histories, these paintings represent a symbolic gesture of restoration, a type of map that charts both the real and the imagined. They gather and take control of the fragments and recast them as embodied wholes, making visual the process of taking control of one’s narrative and being one’s own possession.

La Vaughn Belle

Press: ON THE POLITIKEN ARTICLE THAT CAME OUT ON MARCH 9, 2017

On Thursday, March 9, 2017 just a day before my exhibition, "Ledgers From A Lost Kingdom" opened in Copenhagen, this article appeared in the Danish newspaper "Politiken". The reporter had interviewed me on the Monday, March 6. It was a unique interview. I quickly realized that the angle would be around the Centennial of the sale and transfer of the Virgin Islands from Denmark to the US. She had been writing about these issues over a year and a half she told me. However, this particular interview was very different. We had as you could say "a moment" and it's captured pretty well in the article. Below is the article as it appeared in print in DANISH the ENGLISH TRANSLATION.

However it is the impact the article had and the overwhelming response that it received that was truly a surprise. Since it's print I have received dozens of messages, emails and even personal apologies. There were several people who came to the opening to embrace me and apologize.  I even witnessed my first hate blog post about me. It seemed that the tone of the article and the timing penetrated something in the Danish collective consciousness. Of course I wished that the interviewer focussed a bit more on my art, however I realized that the reason she was interviewing me was because of my art. It's what gave me the platform to speak, so I am grateful. It was a very Danish framing of the article, this question of whether or not they should apologize for their colonial endeavor of slavery. For me as is discussed in the article my response if very measured: an apology is appropriate. In the context of our conversation I spoke first about people in the Caribbean reckoning with how they got there, understanding the history that placed us in these islands in the Atlantic ocean. I describe when that process started happening for me as a young girl and the pain that understanding brought. I also say that everyone needs to have this process of reckoning in how they played a part as a part of the healing process. This is where the reporter questioned me if everyone should apologize, to which I answer yes, as everyone needs to participate in this reckoning. I was concerned when I saw the title of the article- "Artist from St. Croix to the Danes: Indeed, I believe everybody should give an apology"- taken out of the context of our conversation.  I knew when I said that it would be controversial, or at least perceived as such. However, the reporter does a good job of putting it back inside the context of our conversation. So of course it got many people to read the article and then I believe allowed them to participate in the conversation with us. It's really something to read.

ENGLISH​

​Article from Danish newspaper Politiken

http://politiken.dk/kultur/art5863591/Jeg-mener-faktisk-alle-burde-sige-undskyld​

​

Artist from St. Croix to the Danes: Indeed, I believe everybody should give an apology

Denmark should do away with its ' colonial loss of memory ' and its slave past, the artist La Vaughn Belle from St. Croix believes, who now opens a solo exhibition in Copenhagen. It is necessary for us to heal past traumas, she says. Otherwise are allowed to affect the present.

CULTURE 9. MAR. 2017 AT 09.40.

GUDRUN MARIE SCHMIDT

Cultural journalist

After heavy rains they come up. Of the ground, on the beach, in the gutter. Old shards of white porcelain with blue flowers. Small blue fluted china relics of the colonial era, from the days when the three Caribbean Islands Saint Croix, Saint Thomas and Saint John were under the Danish colonial rule.

The broken fragments are what is left of the fine china, Danish plantation owners from the end of the 1700-century, had sailed to their big houses on sugar plantations, so they could eat in style, while slave-made women, men and children toiled in the fields outside. In brutal, inhumane conditions.

The local people call the fragments chaney  – a mixture of china and money, for previously children in the islands collected china fragments and used them as play money.

LEDGERS FROM A LOST KINGDOM

The exhibition ' Ledgers From a Lost Kingdom ' by La Vaughn Belle opens Friday March 10.

It can be seen in the exhibition house Meter, Henrik Rung's Street 25, CPH. up to 17. June

So the artist La Vaughn Belle tells, who lives on Saint Croix, and which she uses in her art.

“They are everywhere. And it is an interesting metaphor of colonization. Small stories that continue to return. As if they never intend to disappear”.

La Vaughn Belle is in Denmark to prepare for her solo exhibition ' Ledgers From a Lost Kingdom ', which opens tomorrow at the exhibition house Meter at Nørrebro (Copenhagen). She is also to participate in several other exhibitions, events and debates in the context of the 100^th anniversary of the sale of Danish West Indies to the United States, and now she and I are sitting in a white-painted workspace in the National Workshops for Arts, which she has been given access to.

This is the third time La Vaughn Belle is in Denmark. And the three stays have given her the experience of a country which is still marked by colonial ways of thinking.

Unlike you, we do not have the opportunity to forget the 250 years since the Islands were Danish colony. That time affects every aspect of our lives

La Vaughn Belle believes that all Danes should take a reckoning with the past. She does not demand anyone, but she thinks it would be appropriate if we give an apology for Denmark's participation in slavery and colonialism in the Caribbean.

In her art, La Vaughn Belle is fascinated by how colonial tools and structures can be transformed, so that they can be used in resistance, she says.

“China is a symbol of wealth. The rebels went into the big houses and smashed the china and all the fine things that plantation owners had bought for money they had earned on the slave-made’s work. So, that narrative is in it as well“.

Around her neck hangs a necklace with a pendant of silver and wood. It is a knife like those the slave-made field workers used to chop sugar cane with in the plantations. And which at the same time were the knives, the slave-made workers used as weapons, when they resisted.

The first time La Vaughn Belle was in Denmark, in 2008, she visited the Royal Copenhagen's House in the main pedestrian street in Copenhagen. Here she found a chronological exhibition of historic china plates that went all the way back to the 1700 's.

Photo: Jens Dresling

La Vaughn Belle in her art has used the small pieces of colonial china that pop out of the ground on The U.S. Virgin Islands after a downpour.

“ At that moment I understood that these pieces of china, which I had known since my childhood in the 1980’s on Saint Croix, were pieces of a larger story. It was an overwhelming experience, and it made me think about how we in the Caribbean have neither access to our full African, European or indigenous people’s identity. What we have are fragments. Which we have had to put together in order to create a new society “.

At the exhibition, La Vaughn Belles shows works that are arising out of the idea of how to create alternative ways to document history. When Denmark sold the colony of Danish West Indies to the United States in 1917, we took all of our documents with us.

“ Our archives were taken. My art works are counter archives, alternative ways to remember. Which also document the things in history that have been suppressed in the colonial archives, for example, the stories of resistance “.

Danish Colonial mindset

During her three visits to Denmark, it has shocked La Vaughn Belle, how little the Danes know about the time when we were colonial masters in the Caribbean. We suffer as a nation from a “ colonial loss of memory “, she says.

» When I meet people, and tell that I am from Saint Croix, there are many who do not even know what it is. You do not know of the history “, she said.

And it is not only with ordinary Danes, she is experiencing memory loss. Also, the institutions fail, she says.

“ The first time I was at the National Museum, I was actually shocked. It is, of course, where you are telling your national history. And then you put in 250 years of history in three small cabinets? This is really a part of history, you are failing to relate to “.

Last year Videnskab.dk made an April fool, where the magazine wrote that due to a special clause on sales treaty Denmark would be able to buy Danish West Indies back in the context of the 100-year of sales to the United States. As is this year.

“ When I was in Denmark last summer, several people were referring to that April fool and said: “ I believe in fact that we intend to buy you back. “ They had bought the joke, thought it was true, La Vaughn Belle says.

“ I had it like this: Sorry, buy who ? Who is it you intend to buy? However, what would justify you to do that? The impudence, the arrogance, the superiority, it is an expression of, it is really insulting. It showed me how many Danes are still marked by a colonial mindset. Otherwise it would be impossible to think like that “.

Last Friday, La Vaughn Belle attended a debate, which among other things was about immigration and integration in Denmark. It was a revelation for her, she says.

“ I could understand from the debate that many in Denmark believe integration is all about that the people who come here, must be just like you. They must adapt to you. It is a mindset that is centered around the Danish culture as superior. But listen, a meeting between people goes both ways. When you and I are sitting here facing each other, we should move each other “.

The rebels went into the big houses and smashed china and all the fine things

The realization of the slave era

La Vaughn Belle thinks it would be good for all Danish citizens to visit the Islands in the Caribbean, where she lives.

“ Unlike you, we do not have the opportunity to forget the 250 years when the islands were Danish colony. That time affects every aspect of our lives. The history is impossible to forget. From the Danish names of towns, to when you are down at the beach and looking up sugar plantations, lying as ruins “, she says.”

“ And we are still colonial citizens. We are Americans, but not real Americans. My children are in elementary school, where they learn more about American history than of the Virgin Islands ' own history. We have inherited a colonial political system that works poorly, and which makes it hard to improve things. There are so many aspects of our society that do not function “.

During the first visit in Denmark, it was a very different society, which met her.

“ I thought: Whoa, wait, everything is working here! The health care system, education system, your transportation system. The Western countries have exploited resources all over the world and been able to build a very comfortable society. And at the same time, I experience this unwillingness to acknowledge how you came here. It was not just your work, it was several hundred years of subjugation and exploitation of other people and their resources “.

What La Vaughn Belle experiences as a colonial loss of memory and displacement, testifies of a country that is far from the Denmark, we want to see us as, she says.

“ Denmark is projecting an image of itself as a progressive country, a country of science and a fair country. You have a conviction that you as a nation do things because it's the right thing to do. But would it then not be the right thing to recognize that you have harmed someone in the past? “.

La Vaughn Belle understood herself for the first time, that she was a descendant of slave-made Africans when she as a 12-year-old read the book ' Roots ' by Alex Haley.

“ That book made me understand why my family was landed here in the Caribbean. And it was a sorrow to me. I cried, so my eyes were about trundle out of the head of me while I was thinking about the men and women before me who have been alienated and disenfranchised slaves. 
I could feel their pain. A pain, I did not know was in me '.The world of whiteness

Her parents did not speak about slavery when she was a child and grew up in Saint Croix, where her parents had moved to from Trinidad and Tobago, when she was quite small. But at school, she had a teacher, a white American who drew the narrow space on the floor in which the slaves were assigned on board slave ships from Africa. Then he asked the children to lie down, shoulder to shoulder, and just notice the room. And then imagine how it would be to lie there for several months without being able to move. The experience set out in her as a profound realization.

Although La Vaughn Belle has dealt extensively with colonization and racism, through her yearlong practise with art, her own daughters of 8, 6 and 4 are still influenced by the past, she says. The family lives in a suburb of Christiansted on Saint Croix, in an area where there are the greatest number of black residents. Anyway, she has experienced that the daughters have wept over their curly hair.

“ Those are some of the things you go through as a black child. You want, that your nose is different, that your skin is light, that your body is different. We internalize the hierarchy between the races, which was established in the past. And when I see my daughters think like that – it is so hard for me “.

In the same way as La Vaughn Belle as being an artist herself has delved down into history, she believes that the Danes have a need to face our past as slave owners right into our eyes. 

“ I mean, of course, that the Danish Government must apologize for slavery and colonialism. It is in its place. But, then, I believe, in fact, everybody should say sorry. I believe everyone should make it work inside themselves so past trauma can be healed, and the present can be free from them “.

A lot of people think that we should not say we are sorry for something that happened many years ago.

“ No, but that is, because they cannot see, that the colonial times are still impacting the world , we live in. With its injustices and odd structures. The world is centred around whiteness and western culture. Still. And you are in need of healing too. Because it is the same brutal mindset, which can make possible the brutality of slavery, that, is impacting your relationship to immigrants today, I believe. That is how I see it.” she says. 

“ Denmark carried out some actions in the past, that were really harmful. And which are still causing harm. The natural is to apologize. “

Okay. Then I wish to say I am sorry to you, while we are sitting here. I wish to say that I am sorry for Denmark’s participation in slavery and the slave trade.

La Vaughn Belle is looking down at the table that is between us. Then she says quietly:
“ I accept your apology. “

After that the atmosphere is changed. 

Do you think it is contributing to heal our mutual historical past, that I said, that I am sorry?

“ You know what ? I have actually never experienced before that someone did that directly to me. “

It was not something , I had prepared myself to. 

“ Yes I believe this is contributing to bring healing. Actually, it felt like a sincere recognition. It became as a stage with you and me here. I felt that you had listened to that which I had to say - and that you could see the pain, I have talked about. Because I could see the same pain in your eyes. And I believe that is the encounters we need in order to change things.” Says La Vaughn Belle. 

Listen up, when my daughter is looking out into the world she asks me: " Mummy, why do they never show pictures of people who look like me? " She wants to be a model and cannot see anyone who has curly hair like hers. What answer can I give her? It is because they do not think that you are beautiful? That I cannot say to her, she is 8 years-old. But I do not have to tell her that, because she knows that. 

While we have been talking the sherds from a handful of blue-white chaney have been laying at the table. Like small stories of a past, that keeps popping up.

La Vaughn Belle sighs.

When people say colonialism is something of the past, I say: “ Excuse me, but have you looked out into the world? It is the same structures we are living under today. On both sides. “