As a starting point the painting La Blanche et la Noire by the French-Swiss painter Félix Vallotton (1913, Hahnloser Foundation collection, Villa Flora in Winterthur, Switzerland). A painting inspired by Manet's Olympia and Ingres' Odalisque à l'esclave, it depicts the Sapphic love between a sylph and a black woman. Unlike his predecessors, Vallotton gets rid of all exotic references. A two-voice dialogue emerges between two women reflecting on gender, race and colonialism.
LA BLANCHE ET LA NOIRE II
As a tableau vivant, the painting is recreated swapping roles while they dialogue in a conversation going through axtracts from ghanean writer Ama Ata Aidoo's book " Our Sister Killjoy"(1977) and poems by the African-American writer, feminist, lesbian and civil rights activist Audre Lorde, from her book of poetry "Black Unicorn"(1978), as well as of excerpts from her essays.