#racisme

Inspired by Manet's Olympia and Ingres' Odalisque à l'esclave, it presents the Sapphic loves between a sylph and a black woman. Unlike his predecessors, Vallotton gets rid of all exotic references., confronting a white female nude in a passive position in contrast to the black woman who looks at her while smoking a cigarette in an almost masculine attitude, refraining from any attempt at seduction. In the recreation and later versions, both the white model and the black woman appear lying or standing, naked or semi-dressed, crowned and covering her face with an allegorical headdress inspired by the tradition of the "crowns" of the Obba (queen or goddess of fertility) of the Yoruba ethnic group/religion, in which different animals and human figures are represented. To end up in a more contemporary reflection, a two-voice dialogue emerges between the two women reflecting on gender, race and colonialism while they read books such as "Afrotopia" by Senegalese thinker Felwine Sarr or "Loot: Britain and the Benin Bronzes" by Barnaby Phillips. The responsibility for the representation of black women in European painting, lthe position of the white woman and the black woman in Victorian times (when colonialism in Africa reinforced the most oppressive imaginary), the stereotyping, exoticization and the cultural appropriations.… Key concepts of world wide feminist thought -home, sisterhood, experience, community- mark the way towards a borderless feminism fully engaged with the realities of a transnational world.