African Venice: A Guide to Art, Culture and People

by Paul Kaplan, Shaul Bassi

African Venice is the first guidebook to the extensive historical and contemporary African presence in the city of the lagoons. A set of ten walking tours highlights images of Black people in Venetian art from the Middle Ages to the present, the afterlife of Shakespeare’s Othello, the painful local legacies of slavery and Italian colonialism, and the remarkable visibility of African and Afro-descendant artists at the Venice Biennale. These tours are enriched by more than twenty essays, poems, and reflections that celebrate, question, and reimagine Venice’s Black past and present. From premodern paintings and sculpture to contemporary artworks, African Venice will show you the city as you have never seen it.

The book includes contributions from Giuseppina Bakhita, Marilena Umuhoza Delli, Rita Dove, Emiliano Guaraldo, Eddy L. Harris, Lorenzo Lazzarini, Ibrahima Lö, Vittorio Longhi, Olga Manente, Tony Mochama, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, Caryl Phillips, Sandra Stocchetto, Sami Tchak, Ngūgī wa Thiong’o, and Alessandra Viola.

272 pages, Paperback

Published April 15, 2025