Walking in Toronto along Queen St West near Ossington you may have been startled by the massive, billboard size photograph adorning the the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art. The photograph is actually a piece by David LaChapelle entitled The Rape of Africa and is going to be on display for the month of May for Toronto’s Contact Photography Festival. Here’s a little explanation of the piece via LaChapelle’s website:

His extravagant take on Sandro Botticelli’s Venus and Mars (c: 1484) is enlarged to massive proportions in MOCCA’s courtyard. The Rape of Africa (2009) simultaneously references the grand architectural paintings of the Renaissance and the supersized advertising billboards of the present day. LaChapelle casts a regal yet passive-looking Naomi Campbell in the role of Venus, goddess of love and beauty, who is powerless to prevent the ravaging of both her body and land. A satiated Mars, the god of war, sits opposite, surrounded by gold and the spoils of his conquest while young boys playfully wield guns as if they are fashion accessories. Loaded with detail and symbolic reference to art history, current events and popular culture, LaChapelle’s contemporary allegory evocatively comments on the effects of war, mining and mass marketing on Africa. Adhered directly to the surface of the courtyard’s stuccoed wall, The Rape of Africa looks as much like a painting as a photograph, heightening the tension between the two mediums.

More detailed photos ahead compliments of John Elmslie as well as Sandro Botticelli’s piece that inspired LaChapelle’s.