Schaambot SKaGeN

In Schaambot, a young black actress, Musia Mwankumi, and a middle-aged white actor, Valentijn Dhaenens, share the mastermind. They teamed up with Geeraerts' book Black Venus and placed big question marks and emotions on reading the novel nowadays. Schaambot is a conversation between two people of today about what they are ashamed of, what arouses their indignation, what they call art, and whether it is timeless or not.

The book came out in 1968 as the first of the four volumes of Gangreen, Geeraerts' autobiography with which he put the genre back on the map.

In 1969, Black Venus was awarded the Triennial State Prize for Prose. In 2015, on Geeraerts' death, it was included in the Canon of Flemish-Dutch Literature. Five years later in 2020, the novel was already removed from the list. The committee ruled that Geeraerts' views on colonialism and women were sickening. The book is brimming with abuse of power, distorted images of women and 'the savage', flat racism and endless pornographic passages with minors.