THE MINAJ BOOK is a soft-cover book with 152 pages and writings about and around the American rapper Nicki Minaj. In a new body of work presented in this book, one of Woodpecker’s own folks, Ditte Ejlerskov, investigates feminism and the gaze of the white middle-class pop consumer, with American rapper Nicki Minaj as the focal point. Minaj has climbed to the top of a male-dominated business and, in the artist’s view, critiques sexuality, power relations, racial stereotypes and patriarchal hierarchies through her acts and lyrics. In order to convey a deeper understanding of Minaj’s unconventional feminist methods, THE MINAJ BOOK unpacks the contemporary mainstream through a body of work which appropriates the rapper’s aesthetics and lyrics. The book endeavors to highlight the gap between pop culture’s feminist efforts and an academic feminism. Primarily via the act of painting, Ejlerskov aims to support the rapper in the mission of spelling out, enhancing and superimposing loaded images. She reuses Minaj’s method of challenging race and gender stereotypes. But since the artist is a white European middle-class consumer and not the Afro-American producer of the material, the focus of the show is twisted. As well as exploring elements of Minaj’s logic, Ejlerskov also explores her own consumption, her gaze, her body, her appropriation, and even her own role as an art practitioner.
