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Press Articles In English
Miss Landmine provokes
by Heidi Nordby Lunde, ABC News (web daily) 26.05.07
Today, a controversial exhibition of an alternative beauty pageant for landmine surivivors will open at Bergen City Museum.
In February, Norwegian artist Morten Traavik travelled around Angola visiting rehabilitation centres, looking for candidates for the Miss Landmine pageant, under the banner “Every body has the right to be beautiful”. Traavik calls the project a mix of art and concrete humanitarian mission, and has received a grant of half a million kroner from Arts Council Norway.
Controversial
Morten Traavik wants to challenge established concepts of beauty and influence common attitudes towards people with disabilities. But the use of landmine victims as objects in a beauty pageant has stirred controversy both in Norway and abroad. The blogger Sokari Ekine wrote an incensed attack on the project as a whole and concludes that it is a repulsive exploitation of African women. Some of the comments to her posting call the project “amputation victim fetishism” and “mutilation pornography”. Some point out that the money spent on this project could have been spent in other ways that might have enabled the victims to provide for themselves and give them real control over their own lives.
To Fett (“Fat”) magazine [Norwegian feminist review – ed.] Traavik says that only “white”, Western aid organisations have been sceptical to the project.
- These organisations often have old-school feminist of both genders in high places, people who freak out as soon as they hear the word “beauty pageant”. No matter what I say after that word, they just can’t deal with it.
He adds that Angolan authorities have allotted USD 15000 to the project, and that it has been well received in that country.
Highest number of landmine injuries in the world
After a 23 year long civil war Angola is one of the world’s most landmine-affected countries, and also has one of the highest numbers of landmine survivors. More than 20.000 people have amputations as consequence of landmines and struggle to provide for themselves and their families.
The ten candidates are presented alongside facts about when the landmine accident occurred, type of mine and its land of origin. The project aims to enable a national network for landmine survivors and grow even outside Angola through the cooperation of international NGOs.
The project will be exhibited in Bergen until Sept 1st and will after that be launched in Angola.