Venus between times: from archaeological speculation to critical fabulation

Abstract

This article draws a parallel between the construction of the image of the prehistoric Venus of Willendorf and the modern Venus of Hottentot, exploring possible reinterpretations and reworkings shaped by feminist epistemological shifts in Archaeology and Visual Arts. In this sense, it brings these two fields of knowledge closer by proposing an archaeology of images through speculations, fabulations, and traces that revisit the past and its archives with new questions, emerging from alternative subjects and perspectives. The critical gaze directed at the past, in seeking to break with certain entrenched structures, also highlights the power associated with controlling discourse and the historical continuity that reaffirms present-day norms. How was not human society – acknowledging its diversity – constructed, but rather the consolidation of certain modern and contemporary structures and relations? How does controlling the discourse about the past serve as a tool for domination in the present? And how can mechanisms be created to challenge these dominant structures?