Hornsleths un/fair trade – æstetisk evangelisme og nykolonialistisk etnografi i samtidskunsten

Abstract

This article takes the Danish artist Kristian von Hornsleth’s controversial art project Hornsleth Village Project Uganda (2006-2007) as a starting point for a discussion of the relation between aesthetics and ethics in contemporary art. Far from advocating that art must be ethically ‘good’ to be of importance, the authors question why transgressive and provocative socially engaged art projects frequently perform, repeat and consolidate patriarchal, racist and colonial structures. The article shows how Hornsleth’s neocolonial ethnographic project enables a reenactment of Western colonial subjectivity, embodied by the artist in the form of a bad ass white avantgarde masculinity, untouchable and above critique.