Words by
Heike Dempster
A trip to Ghana led Danish artist Jeannette Ehlers onto a path that changed her career, her identity and her understanding of post-colonialism and race relations. As she began following the footsteps of the men and women brought to the New World as slaves, Ehlers travelled to the Caribbean and started a journey into deep explorations of history, slavery, colonialism, postcolonialism, race and identity. Of particular significance was the relationship between her native Denmark and its colonial history, mainly one of denial, informed her earliest examinations of these global issues which have now become central to her work as she continues to create a contemporary dialogue through her art.
Is your work in general dealing with topics like colonization and the slave trade? In general my work revolves around those topics – for many years. It started on a trip to Ghana. I realised on my trip that Denmark had been very much involved in the slave trade. I did not know that before because it is not a topic that is very well known in the Danish national identity or in general. It is an unspoken chapter in history. It really shook me. It shook my world up. Of course I knew about the US Virgin Islands as the former Danish West Indies but somehow I did not really know how much it would get to me to really see where they took the slaves in Ghana. To be there and discover, realise, and feel a sense of all that, it really just moved me so much and from then on I knew that I had to make works about this topic because I took it personally.
Tell us a little about your career to date please. I was born in Denmark and I am based in Denmark. I studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and I graduated in 2006. My father is Trinidadian so I have roots in the Caribbean. I have been to Trinidad many times and I have been to other Caribbean islands, for instance the US Virgin Islands that were former Danish islands. They called it the Danish West Indian Islands during the slave trade. They were Danish for around 150 years. Actually, it is almost 100 years since Denmark sold it to the US in 1917. They abolished slavery in 1848.
Did you take that trip specifically to find out something about your roots? The Invisible Empire
1848
74 ROOMS T he Beginning Of A Beaut if ul Fr iendship
I was actually going there because I had a friend who lived there at the time. I was going to do an art project but I immediately changed my mind about the project when I went to some of the forts that were there. They are there still, the ruins. I changed my whole idea about what I wanted to do. After some photo shoots in Ghana I decided to travel in the footsteps of the slave trade so I went to the US Virgin Islands and I also did some pieces in Denmark at specific places, historical places.