Black Images in a White World

In this project, I compare images of slaves and examples of scientific racism, like the story of the Hottentot Venus, to contemporary images by photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. How have black people been used as objects for art and science? How does that reinforce the racial hierarchy of white people being the makers and thinkers while black people are reserved to being primitive beings to be looked at? Has that relationship changed in 200 years, in and outside of the museum space?

For Making/Faking Nature - FA ‘19