Exploring the Black Venus Figure in Aesthetic Practices

Exploring the Black Venus Figure in Aesthetic Practices critically examines a longstanding colonial fascination with the black female body as an object of sexual desire, envy, and anxiety. Since the 2002 repatriation of the remains of Sara Baartman to post-apartheid South Africa, the interest in the figure of Black Venus has skyrocketed, making her a key symbol for the restoration of the racialized female body in feminist, anti-racist and postcolonial terms.

Edited by Jorunn Gjerden, Kari Jegerstedt, and Željka Švrljuga, this volume considers Black Venus as a product of art established and potentially refigured through aesthetic practices, following her travels through different periods, geographies and art forms from Baudelaire to Kara Walker, and from the Caribbean to Scandinavia.

Contributors: Kjersti Aarstein, Carmen Birkle, Jorunn Svensen Gjerden, Kari Jegerstedt, Ulla Angkjær Jørgensen, Ljubica Matek, Margery Vibe Skagen, Camilla Erichsen Skalle, Željka Švrljuga.