Kristine Nielsen

I am currently pursuing two main areas of research. My most recent work examines Nordic contemporary artists responding to histories of Nordic colonialism. Artists such as Marja Helander, Lena Stenberg, Pauliina Feodoroff, Liselotte Wajstedt, Jeanette Ehlers, La Vaughn Belle, Jorma Puranen, and Mattias Olofsson all explore various facets of Indigeneity or colonialism, whether derived from their own cultures or a version with which they are intimately familiar. Their art speaks to the merging of juxtapositions and a new worldview, using forms of resistance against the dominant narratives and visualities in Nordic cultures.

 

My second area of research focuses on controversial political monuments in Germany in the second half of twentieth-century, with a particular focus on the political monuments of the former G.D.R. How did unified Germany in the early 1990s struggle with the sight of the Marxist-Leninist public monuments scattered across the eastern parts of Germany, especially in Berlin? Monuments to Karl Marx, Lenin, Thälmann, and border guards provoked the most violent language, at times resulting in acts of iconoclasm from above and below. Participants in the iconoclasm were not merely seeking to destroy an image and eliminate it from public view. They were also forming new images, alternative visual suggestions, and ways to challenge views in public space.