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Press Articles In English
Strong reactions to Miss crowning
by Maria Røbech Lillebo, Elisabeth Nielsen, radio P4 (nationwide) 15.05.07
Who is fairest of the female landmine victims of Angola? Norwegian feminists react to a beauty pageant for African women disabled by landmines.
Ethical landmine
In the project "Miss Landmine 2007”, Morten Traavik has selected ten Angolan women with amputated legs and arms to compete for the Miss title. On its website, the public can vote for its favourite candidate, choosing from a series of pictures of mine-injured women, who all pose with a Miss tiara on their heads.
Topic editor in Feminist Review, Siri Lindstad, doesn’t understand what Traavik is up to.
- We’re wondering why he is only focusing on women, and we don’t understand why he places the women in this kind of setting, Lindstad says to P4.
Art project
Morten Traavik himself claims that all of the women are taking part of their own free will.
- In Angola, landmine-injured women are, if possible, even worse off than men with such injuries. I wanted to work with those I felt needed it the most. It is a completely voluntary project, where I at any time was fully prepared to abort the project if it had been rejected by Angolan society, he says. He describes the project as a mixture of art and aid.
Understands the reactions
Traavik also says that he understands the ethical reactions to the controversial project.
- Yes, on an initial level, I can understand that.
Because if there’s anything that’s tainted by “pretend-politics” it’s today’s contemporary art scene. But I do not view “Miss Landmine” as part of the self-reflexive discourse of contemporary art. On the contrary, I think that the empty political posing of today’s art scene ought to provoke more than a project of this kind, says Traavik to Morgenbladet [“The Morning Post”].
Humanitarian initiative
He says that he is opposed to so-called ”political art”, which he finds to a large degree to be based on personal vanity, and a wish to make oneself important.
According to Traavik, the beauty pageant is also a concrete humanitarian initiative, aiming to have after-effects in Angola.
- Not so much money as attention. There’s not much focus on the landmine survivors’ situation in Angola, he says, adding that one shouldn’t allow oneself to be paralysed by fear of appearing imperialistic.