The feminine however disguised, is always naked. - Marion Woodman.

Since time began, all traditional cultures have followed the synodic cycle of venus to predict marriage, love, fertility, art+ even war. In her current cycle of libra - the lovers, she supports a new narrative in our love relationships with ourselves, one another+the earth.

The gaze of venus is not dependent on male approval. She doesn't need patriarchal acceptance. The female gaze knows her beauty+her worth, and lives unapologetically from her authentic shade of expression. She reclaims her body to evoke feeling, uses the camera to show how it feels to be the object of the gaze. In her, the pulse of eros lives.

For many of us at some stage this was taken. One in six women experience domestic or sexual violence, and by the time this exhibition ends, another three women will be killed from abuse. We are beautiful, wounded, angry+ powerful. We are survivors. We are wild like Aries, rebellious like Aquarius, sexually libre like Scorpio, and virginal+holy like Virgo. It is only when we love all of these shades, that the feminine will know wholeness. This is my story. But it is my mother's, my grandmother's, and maybe its also yours. Maybe its your daughter's or wife's. It is every woman's story.

Historically, we've been driven from these stories, as we have been driven from our bodies. Unlike our ancestors; to live a mythical, mystical, and creative existence, one in alignment with the natural cycles is a radical act in the patriarchal, capitalist, productive machina that we are offered by modern society. One that thrives on our body shame, desire shame, death of eros, and off the backs of the oppressed.

Venus is one way back.

Whether you identify as male or female, or they; every human has a unique venus placement in their natal chart. If you listen to yours, she will sing you back to yourself; whisper sweetly or impatiently how she wants to make love, make art, live a honey-dipped life of beauty. She is your muse.

If this is your first night connecting with her, go outside. Look her up. Begin anew on this new moon.

Venus gave me back my body. She can do the same for you.

Tonight she rises in the sky, after nine months as morning star + three months in the underworld, where she will look over us as evening star for the next nine months, living out the Sumerian myth of Inanna and her seven gates, in real time.

These twelve archetypal self-portraits (illustrated by Karlee Mackie) are an invitation to take your place in the cosmos+ join the venus revolution, so that we may reclaim her gaze. Together, we rise.

astrologer+photographer, Carly Lorente

(september 2019)