Lars Vilks

Lars Endel Roger Vilks (20 June 1946 – 3 October 2021) was a Swedish visual artist and activist who was known for the controversy surrounding his drawings of Muhammad.

Many years earlier he had 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".

Vilks was born in Helsingborg, Sweden.

His second given name Endel was Estonian, given by his father Eino Vilks who was of Estonian and Latvian descent.

His mother was Swedish.

In the 1970s, he started painting, and in 1984, he embarked on creating the idiosyncratic sculptures that are his hallmark, starting with Nimis.

At this time, in the early 1980s, postmodernism made its definite entry into the Swedish art scene, using inspiration from e.g. the French art philosopher Jean-François Lyotard.

Conceptual artists took the place of the earlier modernists on the contemporary art scene.

These conceptual artists did not want their art to have any aesthetic or programmatic content, but often focused on the artist's self.

Vilks was part of this movement in Sweden.

He turned himself in as a piece of art to the spring saloon at Vikingsberg, Helsingborg, and turned his own car into a piece of art at the fall exhibition at Skånes konstförening.

In 1980, Vilks created two sculptures, Nimis and Arx, the former made entirely of drift wood and the latter of concrete and rock, in the Kullaberg nature reserve in Höganäs, Skåne.

When the local authority found out, it tried to remove them, with fines being imposed, and vandals attacked them with fire and chainsaws.

He earned his doctoral degree in art history from Lund University in 1987, and worked at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts from 1988 to 1997.

However, in 1996, the small area where the sculptures are located was proclaimed by Vilks as an independent country, "Ladonia".

Nimis was sold to Joseph Beuys as a means to circumvent the Swedish building code laws concerning unlawful building process.

The sculpture of Nimis was owned by the late conceptual artist Christo; the legal document documenting the sale is on display at the Swedish Museum of Sketches.

Vilks characterized his own skill in the actual crafts 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 works of Vilks to be incorporated into a collection is the concrete sculpture Omphalos, measuring 1.6 meters high and weighing one tonne, which is owned by Moderna Museet after it was first bought by fellow artist Ernst Billgren for 10 000 Swedish kronor.

Vilks' long-standing controversies with different authorities due to his activities in the nature reserve Kullaberg, where Nimis, Arx, and Landonien are all located, received significant attention in Swedish media, which for the most part portrayed Vilks' work as specifically designed to be provocative.

This attention has turned the area into something of a tourist attraction.

In Vilks' activity as an art theorist, he commented on his own artistic activities in the second or third person.

His different works of art, his actions, actions by those authorities with whom Vilks has been in conflict, and the media attention, were brought together in a Gesamtkunstwerk.

He described himself as an "equal opportunity offender" in his critical depictions of religion.

Indeed, he depicted Christ as a pedophile, as a reference to the scandal in the Catholic church, and also drew a grotesque caricature of "a modern Jew swollen by capitalism".

From 1997 to 2003, he was a professor in art theory at the Bergen National Academy of the Arts.

As an art theorist, Vilks was a proponent of the institutional theory of art.

Although an academically trained art theorist, Vilks was a self-taught visual artist.

In 2007, Vilks caused an international controversy when he depicted Muhammad as a roundabout dog in three drawings, designated to be shown at an art exhibition at Tällerud, in July of the same year.

Shortly before its opening, the organizers canceled their invitation with reference to serious security concerns, and despite Vilks' effort no other Swedish art gallery offered to exhibit his drawings.

Eventually, on 18 August, 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 even though other leading Swedish newspapers had published the drawings before, it was this publication that led to protests from Muslim organizations in Sweden as well as condemnations from several foreign governments including Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt, and Jordan as well as by the inter-governmental Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which also called for the Swedish government to take "punitive actions" against Vilks.

Following this controversy, Vilks was forced to live under police protection after having received several death threats, including a statement by the al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq which offered up to $150,000 for his assassination.

In 2009, a failed plot to kill Vilks was hatched.

Three U.S. citizens, Colleen LaRose ("Jihad Jane"), Mohammad Hassas Khalid, and Jamie Paulin Ramirez, participated in the plot.

On 9 March 2010, LaRose's federal indictment was unsealed charging her with trying to recruit Muslims to murder Vilks.

On the same day, seven people were arrested in the Republic of Ireland over 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 woman at Ballincollig, near Cork.

Garda Síochána (the Irish police force), which conducted the arrests with support from the National Support Services and the counter-terrorist Special Detective Unit, said the suspects ranged in age from mid 20s to late 40s.