VENUS DE ARLES 2018

Editor: Yinka Shonibare’s *Venus de Arles*, made in 2018 with mixed media including ceramic, immediately struck me. The iconic Venus form is reimagined in vibrant, patterned fabrics with a globe for a head, which gives a slightly unsettling feeling. How do you interpret this combination of historical and contemporary elements? Curator: That unsettling feeling is precisely the point. Shonibare plays with symbols we readily recognize – Venus, the globe – and then disrupts them. What do you make of the fabric? Does it remind you of anything? Editor: It’s so colourful and distinctive. I believe it's Dutch wax print? Curator: Exactly. Now, consider this: Dutch wax prints were inspired by Indonesian batiks, but mass-produced by the Dutch and then sold in West Africa. Shonibare, who is of Nigerian descent and raised in Britain, uses this fabric as a potent symbol. Editor: A symbol of what exactly? Curator: Of cultural hybridity and the complex, often contradictory, relationship between Africa and Europe. Venus, holding the apple - an ancient symbol of discord as much as beauty - loses her head to a world of global trade and its entangled colonial past. That gesture, offering the apple, seems loaded now, doesn’t it? Editor: Absolutely. It’s like the artwork is saying the concept of beauty cannot be extracted from its inherent complicated origin. I had initially assumed the vibrant textiles simply added to the appeal. Curator: And it does that, inviting us in with the beauty, only to challenge our understanding of what that beauty signifies. It forces us to confront historical power structures, not just admire them. Editor: I'll never look at a Venus statue or wax print the same way again. Thank you for revealing those layers!