Lars Vilks Wiki – Lars Vilks Biography
Lars Vilks was a Swedish visual artist and activist known for his drawings of Muhammad. He also created the sculptures, Nimis and Arx, made of driftwood and rock, respectively. The area where the sculptures are located was proclaimed by Vilks as an independent country, “Ladonia”.
Although he was an academically trained art theorist, Vilks was a self-taught visual artist. In the 1970s he began painting and in 1984 he embarked on the creation of the idiosyncratic sculptures that are his hallmark, beginning with Nimis. At this time, in the early 1980s, postmodernism made its definitive entrance on the Swedish art scene, taking inspiration, for example, from the French art philosopher Jean-François Lyotard. Conceptual artists took the place of the early modernists on the contemporary art scene. These conceptual artists did not want their art to have any aesthetic or programmatic content, instead, they often focused on the artist’s self. Vilks was part of this movement in Sweden. He was delivered as a work of art to the spring salon in Vikingsberg, Helsingborg, and turned his own car into a work of art at the autumn exhibition in Skånes konstförening.
In 1980 Vilks created two sculptures, Nimis and Arx, the former made entirely of driftwood and the latter made of concrete and rock, in the Kullaberg Nature Reserve in Höganäs, Skåne. In 1996, the small area where the sculptures are found was proclaimed by Vilks as an independent country, “Ladonia”. Nimis was sold to Joseph Beuys as a means of circumventing the laws of the Swedish building code regarding the illegal construction process. The Nimis sculpture was owned by the late conceptual artist Christo; the legal document documenting the sale is displayed in the Swedish Sketch Museum.
Vilks characterized his own skill in the actual craftsmanship involved in sculpture as quite limited, although his artistic ideas can be seen as characteristic of his generation of Swedish conceptual artists. One of the few Vilks works to be added to a collection is the concrete sculpture Omfalos, which stands 1.6 meters tall and weighs a ton, which is owned by Moderna Museet after it was first purchased by the artist. Ernst Billgren for SEK 10,000.
Vilks ‘longstanding controversies with different authorities due to his activities in the Kullaberg nature reserve, where Nimis, Arx and Landonien are located, received significant attention in the Swedish media, which for the most part portrayed Vilks’ work as specifically designed to be provocative. This attention has turned the area into a kind of tourist attraction. In Vilks’ activity as an art theorist, he comments on his own artistic activities in the second or third person. His different works of art, his actions, the actions of the authorities that Vilks has been in conflict with, and the attention of the media all gathered in a Gesamtkunstwerk. He described himself as an “equal opportunity offender” in his critical descriptions of religion.
Lars Vilks Age
Lars Vilks was born on June 20, 1946, in Helsingborg, Sweden.
Muhammad Drawings
In 2007, Vilks sparked an international controversy when he described Muhammad as a rotund dog in three drawings, designated for display at an art exhibition in Tällerud in July of the same year. Shortly before its opening, the organizers canceled his invitation in reference to serious security concerns and, despite Vilks’ efforts, no other Swedish art gallery offered to display his drawings.
Finally, on August 18, one of his drawings was published in the Örebro-based regional newspaper Nerikes Allehanda as part of an editorial on self-censorship and freedom of religion, and although other major Swedish newspapers had published the drawings before, Fue This publication prompted protests from Muslim organizations in Sweden, as well as condemnations from several foreign governments, including Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt, and Jordan, as well as the Intergovernmental Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which also requested that the Swedish government take “punitive actions” against Vilks. Following this controversy, Vilks was forced to live under police protection after receiving several death threats, including a statement from the al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq offering up to $ 150,000 for his murder.
Lars Vilks Cause of Death
Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who drew the head of the Prophet Muhammad on the body of a dog, died in a traffic accident. Vilks was reported to be traveling in a civilian police vehicle that collided with a truck near the southern Swedish town of Markaryd. Two policemen were also killed and the truck driver was injured.
The 75-year-old artist had been living under police protection after being the subject of death threats for the cartoon. A police statement said it was not yet clear how the collision occurred, but initially, there was nothing to suggest that someone else was involved.
“This is being investigated like any other traffic accident. Because two policemen were involved, an investigation has been assigned to a special section of the prosecution,” a police spokesman told the AFP news agency, adding that no there were suspicions of foul play. The police car Vilks was in was traveling at high speed, according to local media reports.
A witness told the Aftonbladet newspaper that the car Vilks was believed to be in appeared to lose control and approached his side of the highway at high speed. The truck in front didn’t have time to swerve and then they collided with a loud crash at “incredible speed,” he told the newspaper. A large fire broke out after the accident and several emergency vehicles rushed to the scene.
Assassination plan
In 2009, a failed plot was hatched to kill Vilks. Three American citizens, Colleen LaRose, Mohammad Hassas Khalid, and Jamie Paulin Ramirez, participated in the plot. On March 9, 2010, the federal indictment against LaRose was released accusing her of attempting to recruit Muslims to assassinate Vilks.
On the same day, seven people were arrested in the Republic of Ireland for an alleged plot to assassinate Vilks. Police officers close to the investigation said those arrested were foreign-born Irish residents, mostly from Yemen and Morocco, and had refugee status. Of the seven, three men and two women were arrested in Waterford and Tramore, and another man and a woman in Ballincollig, near Cork. Garda Síochána (the Irish police force), which carried out the arrests with the support of the National Support Services and the Anti-Terrorism Special Detectives Unit, said the suspects were between 20 and 40 years old. Irish police added that throughout the investigation they had been “working closely with law enforcement agencies in the United States and in several European countries.”
Violent attacks
On May 11, 2010, Muslim protesters attacked Vilks while he was lecturing on freedom of expression at Uppsala University. The attacks began when a film about Islam and homosexuality was shown (the video shows images of topless men, including a brief image of two fully dressed men, kissing, all interspersed with Islamic images) and some Muslims began to demand that it stop. the movie. saying it was gay porn. The film in question was Allah ho Gaybar by Iranian artist Sooreh Hera. Vilks’s glasses were broken, but he was not seriously injured and he was escorted by security, while some of the protesters were detained by the police. Despite previous death threats, this was the first act of violence against Vilks.
A few days later, on May 15, 2010, Vilks’ home in southern Sweden was attacked by arsonists. They broke the windows and threw bottles of gasoline. There was a small fire, but the house did not burn down. Vilks was not at home at the time of the attack. Two Swedish-Kosovar brothers were arrested and on July 15 they were sentenced to two and three years in prison, respectively.
On November 24, 2010, a video produced by the Somali Islamic terrorist organization Al-Shabab was posted. In the video, a Swedish-speaking voice calls on “all Somali brothers and sisters” in Sweden, to leave that country and come to Somalia to fight for Al-Shabaab. Announced a death threat against Vilks. On December 11, 2010, a suicide bomber in Stockholm said in a message to the media and to the Swedish security police that “now your sons, daughters, and sisters will die in the same way that our brothers and sisters die. Our actions They will speak for themselves. As long as you don’t finish your war against Islam and degradation against the prophet and your foolish support for the pig Vilks. ”
Al-Qaeda Target List
In 2010, Anwar al-Awlaki published a list of Al-Qaeda targets in Inspire magazine that included Vilks. In 2013, the list was expanded to include Stéphane “Charb” Charbonnier, who was awarded its freedom award by the Lars Vilks committee in 2014. When Charb was killed in a terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris, along with 11 other people, Al-Qaeda called for more cartoonists to be killed, and Vilks increased his security. After the Charlie Hebdo attack, Vilks said fewer organizations invited him to speak amid heightened security concerns.
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