Carpintarias de São Lázaro

R. de São Lázaro 72, 1150-199 Lisboa

17 . 10 . 2025 → 09 . 11 . 2025

thursday - sunday → 12:00 pm – 06:00 pm

Artist

Tayo Adekunle

Reclamation of the Exposition (2020) explores the commodification, fetishization and sexualisation of the black women’s bodies, specifically through the human displays in ethnographic expositions in the 18th and 19th centuries. The work is influenced by ethnographic photographs which were circulated as pornography. Black (and other racial minority) bodies were photographed either naked in front of a white background, stripped of their identity, or surrounded by random tropical plants to make the photographs seem authentic. Using self-portraiture and digital collage whilst drawing from Prince Roland Napoleon Bonaparte’s photographic collection ‘Boshimans et Hottentots’, the works combine the contemporary with historic ways of being seen. In the larger works, Adekunle turns themselves into a spectacle, recalling the use of black people’s bodies for European entertainment. Artefact (2020) sees the artist placed alongside the women photographed in Bonaparte’s collection. In mirroring the stances of those photographed, Adekunle reflects on the ways in which the legacy of the treatment of these women and women like them exists today. Vénus Noire

Vénus Noire explores the representation and sexualisation of black women in art history, Western cultural history and contemporary culture. The work challenges the ways in which black women are seen and treated by taking on characters and drawing from different parts of racial history like blackface and other racial stereotypes and caricatures. The series also makes contemporary references such as to the Western obsession with women with large bottoms and lips. Using self-portraiture, the work acts as a contemporary reworking of tropes in visual culture, exploring Adekunle’s relationship with her body and the black woman’s