In a new film, ‘Fragments for Venus’, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival on August 30th, director Alice Diop charts the corridors of art history, countering absences in Black Portraiture with depth and precision. The thoughtful and meandering 21-minute short widens the frame of aesthetic sensuality, beginning with Old Masters, moving through the galleries of a museum to contemporary depictions by Black artists. 

Through the eyes of two protagonists, one carefully examining the haunted paintings of a museum, the other wandering the streets of Brooklyn, ‘Fragments for Venus’ is at once a political gesture and an homage to Black life. With clear allusions to the trope of Venus as the embodiment of beauty and femininity, the film, made as part of Miu Miu Women’s Tales, reframes the act of looking. It presses on the important questions of who can look and who can be seen. 

Zanele Muholi, Bona, Charlottesville, 2015

In an effort to attest to new forms of expression, the film ends with a powerful ode to contemporary works by artists Zanele Muholi, Frida Orupabo, Mickalene Thomas, Jennifer Packer, Simone Leigh and Nona Faustine (who sadly passed on earlier this year), among others, all of whom challenge notions of Black representation in various ways. This final segment is followed by Meshell Ndegeocello’s song, Thus Sayeth the Lorde, which summons Audre Lorde – the black, lesbian, socialist, mother, warrior, poet – drawing on Lorde’s ideas against injustice. 

You can view ‘Fragments for Venus’ here.

‘They Tagged the Land With Trophies and Institutions From Their Conquests’ … Nona Faustine outside New York City Hall.