Barleywine
I think I'll bow out now. I liked the idea and execution of it, regardless of the cultural baggage.
Curious dispute. Here we go again...
Okay I see. Well, naively I believed (looking at this deck), that it was the creation of the people that we can see on the cards.
It's indeed a bit misleading.
Curious dispute indeed. That was my friendly way of putting it.
Well, Alice Smeets, that white european woman who initiated the deck, had lived in Haiti for quite a while. The tarot project was a joint effort together with the native people depicted in the deck. We don't know who contributed exactly what amount of ideas to the deck, but surely the deck is at least partially a creation of the people we can see on the cards indeed.
For some people the involvement of a white European in this project still counts as "cultural appropriation". You don't like that, you don't buy the deck. Easy.
I for myself find it curious to judge artwork by anything but the artwork itself. But maybe that's just me. Of cource others may judge artwork the way they want to, and they may express their dislike, even in the most dismissive way.
But to publicly question the legitimacy of other people to create the artwork they want to (as well as to call it what they want to), as it has happend in some posts in the other thread (maybe the ones that got deleted straight away), this is more than just an oddity. It is an attack against freedom of art, freedom of speech, and freedom per se.
Ok, sorry, I am not talking to anyone in particular here, I am only trying to explain to G6 why "curious dispute" was rather a euphemism.
Curious dispute indeed. That was my friendly way of putting it.
Well, Alice Smeets, that white european woman who initiated the deck, had lived in Haiti for quite a while. The tarot project was a joint effort together with the native people depicted in the deck. We don't know who contributed exactly what amount of ideas to the deck, but surely the deck is at least partially a creation of the people we can see on the cards indeed.
For some people the involvement of a white European in this project still counts as "cultural appropriation". You don't like that, you don't buy the deck. Easy.
I for myself find it curious to judge artwork by anything but the artwork itself. But maybe that's just me. Of cource others may judge artwork the way they want to, and they may express their dislike, even in the most dismissive way.
But to publicly question the legitimacy of other people to create the artwork they want to (as well as to call it what they want to), as it has happend in some posts in the other thread (maybe the ones that got deleted straight away), this is more than just an oddity. It is an attack against freedom of art, freedom of speech, and freedom per se.
Ok, sorry, I am not talking to anyone in particular here, I am only trying to explain to G6 why "curious dispute" was rather a euphemism.
To publicly question the name of this deck is not an attack against freedom of speech, it is free speech itself. Plain and simple.
I'm white and I'm making a deck using all lower income people of color as models for the imagery. I'm calling my deck, The Jigaboo Tarot. I don't understand what all the fuss is about. Curious dispute, really.
Publicly questioning the name of this deck is a legitimate expression of free speech. Correct. Not my point though.
Publicly questioning the legitimacy of the artist naming her deck whatever she wants to, is something completely different. People in the other thread claimed that Alice Smeets "doesn't have the right" do to what she was doing. How should I understand this other than as a request to restrict freedom of art?
Hmm. The word "ghetto" apparently originated in Venice and referred to a restricted enclave of Jews. It has become a racial flash-point for moderns (especially Americans) who are hypersensitive to political correctness. In Haiti, whites and mulattos combined constitute only 5% of the population, which suggests that the segregation in Port-Au-Prince is economic, not racial. The Haitian residents who participated seemed proud of their work, and it didn't come across as exploitation to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghetto