BLACK VENUS, Curated by Aindrea Emelife
13 May – 21 August 2022
Fotografiska New York
281 Park Avenue South
CLICK HERE TO VIEW PRESS RELEASE
CLICK HERE TO ACCESS DROPBOX FOLDER OF IMAGE FILES
CLICK HERE TO ACCESS CHECKLIST OF WORKS ON VIEW
From colonial-era fetishizations to contemporary works by Kara Walker; Carrie Mae Weems; Zanele Muholi; and more, a new museum exhibition examines the historical representation of Black women through over 30 contemporary artworks, created between 1975 and today, and a selection of archival imagery dated 1793 to 1930. With artists of numerous nationalities (and birth years spanning 1942 to 1997), the show presents a global, cross-generational investigation into Black women’s reclamation of agency amid the historical fetishization of the Black female body.
Conceived and guest-curated by British independent curator Aindrea Emelife, and organized by Fotografiska New York, BLACK VENUS recurrently references three visual culture pillars that affected Western perception of the Black female body:
Saartje Baartman (1789-1815), a.k.a. “the Hottentot Venus,” who was enslaved by Dutch colonizers and toured around Europe as part of a ‘freak show’ due to her non-Western body type. Caricatured depictions of her spread around the globe and indelibly catalyzed the Western othering of Black women.
Josephine Baker (1906-1975), referred to by BLACK VENUS artist Ming Smith as “one of the most iconic representations of Black female sexuality.”
A 1793 etching, The Voyage of the Sable Venus, from Angola to the West Indies, an abhorrently glamorized depiction of the transatlantic slave trade that was made famous as an illustration in a 1798 book about the history of the British Colonies. This widely circulated image perpetuated a violently inaccurate narrative among the Western educated class at a time when alternative visual information on the topic would have been scarce and similarly whitewashed.
In BLACK VENUS, these archival depictions pair with vibrant, narrative portraiture by some of today’s most influential Black image-makers whose work deals with layered examinations of Black femininity. Said Emelife: “By visiting the exhibition and exploring the Black female image from the late-1700s until now, viewers are invited to confront the racial and sexual objectification and embodied resistance that make up a significant part of the Black woman’s experience—and to celebrate the current upheaval of this stereotype, at the hands of Black artists.”
More information is in the above-linked press release, and a preview of works on view is below. See the Dropbox folder linked above to download high-resolution image files. Artwork information and credits are in each image’s file title.
