Nona Faustine
White Shoes
London, UK: MACK, 2021
72 pp., 30 x 29 cm., hardcover
Edition size unknown
Nona Faustine first began the White Shoes series after reading about Sarah Baartman, an enslaved Khoekhoe woman who was exhibited as a freak show attraction in 19th-century Europe, under the name Hottentot Venus. In the series, the artist photographed herself naked except for a pair of white high heels in each of New York City’s five boroughs, in locations historically associated with the slave trade.
The large-format self-portraits take place in public, at the sites of former burial grounds, the farms of slave-owners and locations where slaves ships docked. The most notorious image features Faustine in the freezing cold, naked but for a pair of white pumps, in the middle of the intersection at 74 Wall Street (Seamen's Savings Bank) where enslaved people were once auctioned.
Faustine died a week ago today, in New York. She was forty-eight. Her death was announced by her gallerist Higher Pictures, and no cause was given.
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