The Birth of Venus

Using staging which emulates the Renaissance era painting, “The Birth of Venus” by Sandro Botticelli, this portrait is a representation of femininity and divinity. In this image, water is the medium through which a sacred connection with ancestry of the African diaspora is reinforced. The waters present in this image are in fact, not those of the ocean, but rather the extremely saline alkaline waters of Mono Lake in California. These waters are about twice as salty as the ocean, as it is a terminal lake with no outlet at all to the Pacific. This surreal environment creates a framework for examining the concept of hybrid identity; the waters of a lake saltier than the ocean, with air-light porous pillar formations created by subsurface water springs displacing the binaries of land and sea. 

Produced in collaboration with In Rapture. Mono Lake, California. November, 2017