MONUMENTS OF SUBURBIA BY MINNA HENRIKSSON

ONLINE CONTRIBUTION / EAT THE RICH

‘Monuments of Suburbia: The Spatial Politics of Public Art in Helsinki‘ by Minna Henriksson. A text from the publication Sustainable Societies for the Future.

This text approaches the topic of urban development and segregation of the suburbs in Helsinki through observations of its public space. To clarify from the start, when discussing segregation in the Nordic countries, as well as issues surrounding inequality and the polarization of societies, we must first acknowledge that the Nordic countries are societies founded on racist institutional practices. Race science was a highly influential scientific discipline in each of them during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While traces of these practices in the sphere of science have been actively hidden, in other fields such as art, they remain very much present. Race science, which gave birth to eugenics laws, were in place in all Nordic countries until the end of the 1960s, and in some until the end of the 1970s.

CREDIT
Minna Henriksson (Writer)
Motto Books (Publisher)
Olga Prader (Designer)