Monday, October 13, 2014



Swedish Artist Dan Park Sentenced Over Racist Art



Swedish artist Dan Park has been sentenced to six months in prison and fined $10,000 for artworks that depict Roma and black people in a derogatory and offensive light, the Guardian reports.

On Thursday, he was convicted of both defamation and inciting hatred against an ethnic group for nine posters he created that were eventually seized from Gallery Rönnquist & Rönnquist in the Swedish city of Malmö in early July. The owner of the gallery, Henrik Rönnquist, also received penalties in the form of a conditional sentence and a hefty fine.

One of the offending posters depicted black men with nooses wrapped around their necks, while another implied that specific Roma community leaders condoned crime.

While it is atypical for Swedish courts to give out prison sentences for artworks, it was decided that these pieces were transgressive enough to warrant time behind bars.

SOURCE

What artists put up is normally given very wide latitude but not in uptight Sweden, apparently



1 comment:

Go Away Bird said...

The three hanging stick man figures should be JESSIE JACKSON,AL SHARPTON and LOUIS FARKHAN