Isle of Venus is a site specific installation by Kiluanji Kia Henda conceptualized during the artists sojourn in Florence as a reflection on the city, its history and its relationship to transitory people whether tourists or other seemingly impermanent residents.

Island mentality refers to the notion that isolation and lack of consideration for all beyond one’s borders produces a sense of superiority that is insular in its desensitization. This notion is not reserved for those geographically cut off from others but spills over onto those societies so habitually engaged in establishing the terms, norms, canons, borders and values that they thrive on, that they rarely take notice of the labor intensively constructed fiction or the painstakingly preserved facade.

Isle of Venus is a meditation on the socio-psycho and self imposed short sightedness produced by the transformation of cities into theme based museum sites, whether anchored in the romanticism of the Renaissance or in the gritty appeal of the medieval. Part and parcel of this veneer is the distancing of all things unaligned with, or that effectively, evoke the social underpinnings of this consistent barrage.