Presentation 2: Lilli Bernard

The artist presentation that most intrigued me this week was that of Lili Bernard, an Afro-Cuban artist based here in Los Angeles. I found her art to be very beautiful, vibrant, and complex, and I appreciated that it seemed focused on drawing attention to the lived experiences of Afro-Latinas, as their experiences are often ignored or marginalized in Chicanx Studies classes. Moreover, as one of the women drugged raped by Bill Cosby, her art was an outlet for expression for both her own sexual traumas and that of her fellow sisters.

The painting below, titled The Sale of Venus, offers a clear parallel to Botticelli's The Birth of Venus, the latter painting depicting the goddess Venus arriving to the shore after her birth. In Bernard's response, she reimagines Venus as a black woman being sold as a slave, a style that is reminiscent of the reimagining of cultural icons by Chicanas we've studied in this class.

Thank you to the presenter for bringing this artist's work to light!