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Between Here and There: Navigating the Danish Colonial Past and United States Imperial Present through Public Sculpture in the Virgin Islands
Wilson, Michael K.
Wilson, Michael K.
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2024-08
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Africology and African American Studies
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http://dx.doi.org/10.34944/dspace/10868
Abstract
This study analyzes select visual art projects created between 2016 and 2023 in relation to the Centennial Commemoration of Transfer Day in Denmark. The focus will be three public sculpture projects erected during this time: Danish artist John Kørner’s 2016 public commission of Victor Cornelins for the city of Nakskov; the U.S. Virgin Islands 2017 person-to-person gift to Denmark consisting of Ghanaian artist Bright Bimpong’s casted busts of General Buddhoe, David Hamilton Jackson and Freedom; and St. Croix artist La Vaughn Belle and Afro-Danish Artist Jeannette Ehlers 2018 collaborative artist-led sculpture project I Am Queen Mary. They represent the first public sculptures dedicated to people of African descent in Denmark. Utilizing Agency Reduction Formation, Black Cultural Mythology and the Nzuri Model as theoretical frameworks, this study asks the following questions: 1) How is Danish colonization of the Virgin Islands commemorated through public sculpture? 2) How do commemorative practices engage with Virgin Islands culture and traditions? 3) If and how do commemorative practices challenge or uphold colonial perspectives and epistemes?
This study will utilize iconographic analysis, document and archival research, informal interviews and field research throughout Denmark and the Virgin Islands to compare commemoration practices and how they contribute to empowering Afro-Danish and Caribbean people. Since these sculpture projects are relatively new topics of study, this research project will be exploratory in nature to identify potential patterns and ideas. The time-period of focus for data collection will between 2016 and 2023 to coincide with related projects in development leading up to Centennial, and projects developing after the Centennial. 2023 reflects the U.S. Virgin Islands 175 anniversary of Emancipation.
I argue these projects navigated various articulations of resistance yet made a significant social and institutional impact on Denmark’s cultural landscape, while further expanding the canon of artistic practices from the U.S. Virgin Islands. It is my aim that this dissertation contributes to developing, identifying, and evaluating conceptual tools, within the discipline of Black Studies, that artists and scholars can use to further create representational agency for people of African descent wherever they are in the world.
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