Black Women at the Louvre—Faith Ringgold, Beyoncé and Barbara Chase-Riboud: Reflections on Alice Diop’s Fragments for Venus
by Beti Ellerson
African American women artists have long contemplated the significance of subverting the gaze, of representation in the hallowed halls of the Louvre, as a means to claim their existence as black women, in the most revered place of world art. Three notable examples: Faith Ringgold, Beyoncé and Barbara Chase-Riboud, whose works have featured prominently—imagined or in reality—in the spaces of the museum.
In many ways, the 21-minute film, Fragments for Venus by Black French filmmaker Alice Diop is in contrast to their direct engagement with the Louvre. Her personage, interpreted by Kayije Kagame, one of the protagonists in her film Saint Omer, traverses these galleries alone, as she carefully scrutinizes the iconic tableaux representing predominantly white women. She pauses, as she reflects on the many representations of black people, in the role of servant and domestic. And there is Madeleine, in the celebrated 1800 painting, “Portrait d'une femme noire” by Marie-Guillemine Benoist.
Paradoxically, in the second part of the film, Alice Diop traverses the Atlantic to Brooklyn, New York, in search of the black Venuses catalogued in the poem
Voyage of the Sable Venus, by the African American author Robin Coste Lewis; its litany of representations of Black women accompanies the film in voice-off. Alice Diop describes her relationship with Coste Lewis's oeuvre in this way: "Since the first moment that I encountered this text, I am no longer the same woman nor the same filmmaker."
Faith Ringgold’s story-quilt, "Dancing at the Louvre", (1991) relates the adventures of its fictional character, the young African American Willa Marie Simone, who moves to Paris in the early 20th century. Contrary to the reverential comportment of Alice Diop’s museum-goer, Faith Ringgold’s personages, which include Willa Marie Simone and her daughters, are playful, joyful, mischievous, irreverent even, as they transgress the polite decorum of museum visitors.
Similarly, Beyoncé’s "Apeshit", performed with Jay-Z, blurs the boundaries of exhibition and spectacle, disrupting the rules of "high art". Side by side with the Mona Lisa, she imposes herself. On the Daru Staircase connecting the Denon wing, she sprawls on the steps during her provocative dance, demanding the attention of the viewers, as the legendary "Victoire de Samothrace" looms in the background.
Rather than searching elsewhere for traces of black Venuses, Beyoncé appropriates the spaces of the same museum which hails the iconic Venus de Milo. During the "Apeshit" refrain, she celebrates her presence at the Louvre: "I can’t believe we made it, this is what we’re thankful for."
And then, there is artist and writer Barbara Chase-Riboud, who came to France from the United States in the early 1960s. She writes in her 2025 memoir of the same name: "I always knew." The retrospective of her life and work presented through 2024-2025, in eight iconic Parisian museums, including the Louvre, (Musée d’Orsay, Palais de la Porte Dorée, Musée du Louvre, Cité de la musique - Philharmonie de Paris, Centre Pompidou - Musée national d'Art Moderne, Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, Musée National des arts asiatiques - Guimet, Palais de Tokyo) is perhaps the most remarkable example of the enduring journey of African American women artist. They always knew, of their relevance, their place. Whether as writer or artist, Barbara Chase-Riboud, from Cleopatra to Sarah Baartman (named the Venus Hottentot) to Sally Hemings and Josephine Baker, elevates Black women in her work. And in so doing, through her work, re-frames the Black woman as equal partner in the world of art, culture, creativity.
One may also ponder Alice Diop’s fascination with the colorful black women of Bed-Sty in Brooklyn, beyond the equally colorfully dressed and vibrant women in the multicultural neighborhoods of Paris and its banlieues. Alice Diop, in fact, describes why:
When I walk through the streets of Bed-Stuy in New York, I don’t feel like the same woman as when I walk through Paris. I have the impression that my relationship with my body, with space, with other people, and with myself, is totally modified. There is something specific in Black America, and especially in the neighborhood of Bed-Stuy.
Watching the film, the viewer is especially struct by an ever-present woman—voluminous and imposing, the Franco-Cameroonian writer and stage actor, Sephora Pondi—most known for her performance in Medea at La Comédie Française. She had this to say about her experience with the role:
I had a very great desire to interpret Medea. I definitely wanted the role to traverse multiple contradictory emotions. In order to reveal its diversity, its multiple aspects. I searched for something very refined, in order to bring out its full meaning. It is a very sensorial performance.
Almost in a contrasting way to her character as Medea at La Comédie Française, Sephora Pondi is transported to this historically black neighborhood of New York, as if a transatlantic gaze at the lives of the black women there. Alice Diop explains her choice of the two women, Kayije Kagame and Sephora Pondi, who actively inhabit the film:
The casting of this film could not have been done without either of the two women. Their presence is almost a political declaration. These two women, these two bodies, these two sensibilities, the presence of these two women, interrogate the norm, the manner in which we are taught to look at a woman, as beautiful and desirable. These questions through the choice of these two actors, whose could not exist one without the other, drive the film.
I am immediately reminded of the black French performance artist Rébécca Chaillon of Guadeloupean ancestry who places her massive body at the intersection of the myriad discourses around feminism, anti-racist struggles, the promotion and defense of queer culture, and decoloniality; and like Alice Diop, she deconstructs the black female body, interrogates its historical assignment in western cultures. Rebecca Chaillon notes that the point of departure behind her performance oeuvre Carte noire nommée désir is in part a reflection on the manner in which the desire for black women has been constructed. She elaborates on her work:
I attempt to talk about desire as it relates to black women in the French context by asking myself what are the references, the models, which constructed it. And the response is not very good at all. For the most part, black women’s bodies have been hypersexualized, objectified, animalized, while it is rather difficult, even impossible, to treat white bodies and the privileges that result from them. The essentially masculinist point of view regarding our lived experiences as black women has structured a whole part of the collective imagination and promoted it within the dominant discourse.
Similarly, Franco-Congolese actress Deborah Lukumuena who directed her first short film, Championne, wanted to re-frame bodies like hers on the screen as well as the ways of viewing them. She had this to say about making the film:
There is a political issue in the film which is to show what is not habitually seen, this kind of sexuality and these non-normative, atypical bodies. Not only are these bodies not habitually seen, but to film them as such, to give them sexual and sensual value. A lot of people say to me: ‘It is great to be filmed in this way.’ For me it made sense that in the middle of these things outside of the norm, this body inscribes itself. I don’t know if I will direct films on the long term, but if I do it will be to show what I don’t see. And I don’t see these kinds of bodies, I don’t see them filmed in this way, I don’t see them on the screens.
Let us not forget the inimitable Franco-Malian singer Aya Nakamura and her memorable performance with the Garde républicaine during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris 2024, on the Pont des Arts which connects the Académie Française to the Louvre via its Cour Carrée, in many ways with a nod to Beyoncé: "mon body, c’est de l’art".
Moreoever, during the late 2010s, imposing adverts covering the façade of structures under restoration were part of the visual landscape of the center of Paris. On several buildings of the Louvre, the captivating gaze of Black women on Balenciaga and Bottega Veneta posters is fixed on the visitors and flâneurs who pass by along the banks of the Seine. In the interior grounds of the museum, visitors of the Carrousel Garden and Cour Napoléan courtyard take in the bombast visual spectacle of a Tiffany & Co. advertisement with Beyoncé and Jay-Z.
And hence, the artistic and creative intellectual work around the visual representation of black women emerges, increasingly visible on the French landscape, in public discourse, and art in particular: and Afro-descendant women are forging the path.
1. Screen capture of Fragments for Venus
2. Faith Ringgold, Dancing at the Louvre
3. Screen capture of Beyoncé in ApeShit
4. Barbara Chase-Riboud, Africa Rising
