Afra van 't Veld

Venere Inverso

The secret, something that lives inside you, inside all of us. Our sexuality. Banished to the shadows, deliberately undiscussed. An inexhaustible source of conversation, but only when it's discussed as "the secret." There's a fine line between disgust and pleasure. Admiring the aesthetic, knowing that a "real" person is behind it, can quickly be experienced as unpleasant. Venere Inverso is a work that addresses both aspects of sexuality.

There's a taboo surrounding sexuality. Venere Inverso connects disgust, female sexuality, and the objectification of men. It writes in a new chapter of photography, in which women have the power to create pornographic or erotic images of men. At the same time, the work questions itself and critiques our tense and anxious view of sexuality as "the secret."

The objectified man is a man of flesh and blood; he continues to grow in a petri dish. His bacteria, a mixture of his body and personality, the situation he finds himself in, the soap he used, and the choices he made only matter later. He is intimately present in the room, along with his glorification.