COLONIAL WORLD VIEWS

Vera Nilsson studied and depicted her surroundings. She used the sketches as her memory and used them when working in other artistic media. On her travels around the world, Nilsson portrayed many of the people she met. In Paris, for instance, she encountered the African diaspora (people who live and work in another country than the one where they were born). She was also influenced by the ideological movement known as Négritude. The founding members of this group were French-speaking intellectuals from the Caribbean and West Africa. Their idea was to underpin and strengthen the black population’s awareness of their cultural background, for instance by protesting against colonialism, eurocentrism and racism.

Vera Nilsson wanted to be a part of the change and to formulate possible alternatives to the early 20th-century white world order. Through the images she presented under the label of Négritude, she proclaimed herself a “negrophile”. The “negrophiles” saw themselves as the friends of the black people. Creating images of black people was an artistic act of resistance against what they themselves represented: white “civilised” citizens. Despite their conviction that they were acting for the good by promoting the interests of others, the protests of these artists nevertheless reflected the colonial power structure. The images confirm this world image, which persists to this day.