Sudden encounters of conceptual kind

I was heading to a remote village in Mukono District on a jam packed minibus taxi, when on the side of the road I saw a sign indicating the site of a controversial art project I remembered reading about a couple years back.

In 2006 Kristian von Hornsleth, a Danish artist, came to a small village of Buteyongera and, in what he called “a business deal”, gave a live pig or goat to each person who legaly changed their name to ‘Hornsleth’. The villagers were then photographed with their newly issued ID cards and pictures were sold as original artwork at Hornsleth’s photo exhibition in Copenhagen, titled “We Can Help You, But We Want To Own You”.
Insensitive to the disclaimer on Hornsleth’s website: “Don’t worry, this is art!”, Kampala officials eventually put a stop to the project and the Ugandan Minister of Ethics criticized the artist as being mentally deranged, demeaning and racist. In his defense, Hornsleth stated that donors had been doing barter trade of sorts in aid given to the poor, and argued that aid should better be granted for something, like adopting his name for a live animal.
I have to say, ten weeks into my stay in Uganda, I have little tolerance for conceptual art of sorts.

~ by eyeontheequator on November 23, 2009.