Jeannette Ehlers

Jeannette Ehlers was born in 1973 in Holstebro, Denmark. Ehlers mother was white Danish, and her father was Afro-Caribbean Trinidadian.{{Cite web |last=Jahanara Kabir |first=Ananya |title=Creolised Dance, Museumised Space: Jeannette Ehlers and Decolonial Re-Edification |url=https://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/media/pdf/books/978-88-6969-535-3/978-88-6969-535-3-ch-04_EwubFwp.pdf}} From a very early age Ehlers knew she wanted to be an artist. When she was 14 years old, she modeled for a designer school in Denmark, and that influenced her decision to become an artist.{{Cite web |title=FEMEXFILMARCHIVE - Jeannette Ehlers |url=https://sites.google.com/ucsc.edu/femexfilmarchive/filmmaker-index/jeannette-ehlers |access-date=2025-03-25 |website=sites.google.com |language=en-US}} Ehlers started to concentration in visual art through drawing during her late teens. Ehlers then applies to a couple art classes during her early 20s. She then applied for The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Denmark, which only accept a small number of people during each application period, and she did not get accepted the first time around. She wasn't accepted to The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts until she was about 24 years old.

Transnational public art project, sharing the Caribbean roots and colonial history that connects not only the two artists who created this monument, but with people effected around the world.

This art piece is a statue of a woman, named Mary Thomas, is almost 23 feet tall, sitting in a wide-backed chair, holding a torch on her left hand and a tool for cutting sugar cane on the right hand. This woman is wearing a dress, head wrapped and is sitting bare foot while looking straight ahead. This statue represents a 19th century rebel woman, referred to as a queen, who led a revolt in the Caribbean against Danish colonial rule. This monument is a memorial to commemorate Danish colonial impact in the Caribbean and the individuals who choose to fight against it. This is the first public monument of a black woman in Denmark, where most of the public monuments are of white men.

In 1878 an uprising called the "Fireburn" lead by "the three queens," Mary Thomas being one of those queens, inspired this monument. "Fireburn" took place in Frederiksted in St. Croix, where fifty plantations and most of the town was burned. This was called the largest labor revolt in Danish history. Denmark had prohibited the trans-Atlantic slave trafficking in 1792, but they did not enforce the ban right away, which led to the rule taking effect 11 years later. They wanted to ensure that there were enough slaves to keep the plantations running, Slavery continued until 1848, and the conditions for former slaves did not improve. Through this injustice was how the uprising on St. Croix took place.

This exhibition was made by Jeannette Ehlers with Konate's Residency's research and education to show the power of colonial influence, colonial history, and the African Diaspora. This exhibition is a series of photographs targeted to discuss and reveal the long-standing effects of European Colonialism, as well as a deep dive into spirituality and wisdom. A public conversation program worked alongside this exhibition to bring to light education, colonial history and diaspora, and a poetry salon. In Ehlers exhibition she uses elements of braided hair and dirt to represent slavery in the plantations about how they are being held against their will in the Caribbean due to colonization.

The theme of the exhibition is the relationship between human, nature, and culture, which reveals the trauma that hides behind the concept of diaspora and colonization. Ehlers wants to start a conversation and bring to light the neglected history of the diaspora and its identity within our communities. Ehlers and Konate's Residency work together to help heal, change, and create a common meeting ground where people of various differences can come together.

Jeannette Ehlers started working on the We're Magic. We're Real in 2020. This series includes photographs, installations and live performances that uses hair to show how it is an important identity maker across communities of African descent. We're Magic. We're Real was initially commissioned by Danish designer Mads Norgaard and first performed in November 2021 and featured Ehlers accompanied by supporting performers of African ancestry. All performers were connected to the front of a colonial building using long cornrows as if the braids were growing out of it. Ehlers also makes a poetic metaphor when intertwining the hair with the leaves of the climbers covering the building to symbolize the relationship between culture and nature, body and landscape, history and the present.

We're Magic. We're Real was also presented at PAMM (Perez Art Museum Miami), local Afro-Caribbean and Caribbean diaspora community throughout Miami was invited to do a collaboration by participating in a collective intergenerational braiding circle, that took place on September 21, 2024 in the East Portico of the Museum, which created an 85-foot-long braid that was used during the performance event held a few days after.

{{Reflist}}

• {{Official website|https://www.jeannetteehlers.dk/}}
• [https://www.iamqueenmary.com/ I Am Queen Mary artwork website]

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Category:Caribbean artists

Category:Danish artists

Category:Living people

Category:1973 births

Category:Place of birth missing (living people)

Category:Danish people of Trinidad and Tobago descent

Category:Artists from Copenhagen