Val Souza — Vênus

The Brazilian artist’s work is based on extensive iconographic research into the representation of black women in Brazil and around the world, which she has been pursuing for several years. Val Souza draws from a variety of sources (magazines, the Internet, books, social media, personal archives, etc.) and combines historical images with contemporary photographs to better question the underlying violence of traditional representations of black bodies.  

Portraits of pop culture icons such as Beyoncé and Kim Kardashian cohabit with those of Val Souza, the writer and activist Sueli Carneiro, Nina Simone, and many others, as well as with anonymous photographs and ethnographic images. Val Souza’s Vênus portrays a composite goddess, embodied both by the distressing representation of Saartjie Baartman, an enslaved woman who was exhibited and exploited in France under the stage name “Hottentot Venus,” and by joyful faces and bodies who seem free of pain. Val Souza addresses symbols and narratives that form the basis of Brazilian social imagery and mechanisms of racialization and oppression; she offers alternative modes of representation that serve as tools of emancipation and potential gateways to other possible futures.  

Val Souza was born in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1985. The holder of a Master’s in Dance from the Universidade Federal da Bahia (Salvador) and a degree in Pedagogy from Mackenzie Presbyterian University (São Paolo), she is the recipient of the ZUM Photography Scholarship from the Instituto Moreira Salles (2020), the “Life Before Colonialism” Prize from PLACE for Africa, MeineWelt e.V. and the Goethe-Institut Mannheim (2022), and the Alliance Française Photo Prize for Estudos Vênus #1 on the occasion of the Rencontres d’Arles Festival (2023). Souza was also selected in the “Nova Fotografia” program of the Museu da Imagem e do Som de São Paulo (2023), and awarded the First Prize in the Performing Arts section of Preta Hub’s Potências Negras (2023). In 2024, her artwork Vênus was included in Foam Magazine #65 Talent. That same year, Souza took part in the 2nd edition of Almeida & Dale Gallery’s “Contra-Flechade” program. She is currently short-listed for the 9th edition of the Pampulha Scholarship.