Trickster’s Tears

Abstract

Swedish Ivorian artist Lydia Östberg Diakité’s digital artwork Cry Baby (2020) makes a case for crying as a healing practice for AfroNordic people while navigating conditions for the public, online display of black emotional vulnerability. Composed of GIFs and a soundtrack, Cry Baby combines the artist’s personal narrative with viral internet content. Across the work’s visual and sonic registers, this article argues, Diakité’s reconstruction of the troll or trickster figure troubles binary divisions between stylized and sincere emotion. The work demonstrates a self-reflexive and situated engagement with black pop culture, internet aesthetics, and affective politics. Thus, this article explores how Cry Baby contributes an AfroNordic perspective to larger, transnational conversations about blackness, digital culture, transparency, and privacy in contemporary art.