Venus has long been a figure shaped by fantasy, desire, control. In this exhibition, Venus isn’t a singular body—she is a series of portals, guardians, and re-embodied presences. Venus Reincarnated traces her shifting meanings across centuries, from Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus in the 1480s to the 19th-century lithographs of Sarah Baartman—called the “Venus Hottentot”—whose body was displayed and dissected across colonial spaces.Through the various representations in this exhibition, Venus moves from being an objectified, colonized figure to a self-fashioned maker of new, fabulatory worlds.
Presented at Public Functionary, this exhibition offers a timely meditation on how Venus lives on in contemporary culture. Minneapolis, a city with deep histories of resistance, migration, and cultural regeneration, becomes the perfect site for Venus’ reincarnation. In the fictional world of Venus Reincarnated, Venus is goddess and galaxy, symbol and vessel, archive and oracle. In this exhibition, artists engage with Venus not as a fixed ideal but as a living, breathing framework through which to explore materiality, memory, fantasy, and power.
Venus Reincarnated
Runs Nov 1 - Dec 6
PF Main Gallery - #144
Open During Art Attack Weekend Nov 14-16
Gallery Hours
Thursday: 1pm - 5pm
Friday: 1pm -5pm
Saturday: 1pm - 5pm
