Art Funded by you

Sarah Baartman Remembered

Senzeni Marasela, 2005

This series of prints made in 2005 took up the life of Sarah Baartman, a former slave who was toured to Britain and Europe, notoriously exhibited as a curiosity and specifically as the ‘Hottentot VenusÂ’; she was dissected and displayed after her death in Paris in 1815. Her story became a paradigm case of the voyeurism and racism of colonial culture and science, has been written about extensively, and became well-known to a broader public following the French agreement to repatriate her remains, in response to Nelson MandelaÂ’s request, in 2002. A number have artists have produced work in response to BaartmanÂ’s history, but this series is of particular interest and importance. MaraselaÂ’s prints allude to the iconography of BaartmanÂ’s exhibition, but foreground a celebration of a life and its passages. By reworking even the moments of BaartmanÂ’s cruellest exploitation through her own graphic idiom, Marasela represents this story as one that belongs not to the critics and discourses of postcolonial theory, but to the imaginations (and critical imaginations) of South African women such as herself; Sarah becomes a precursor of those who experiences may not be notorious, but may have been marked by common traumas of exploitations and abuse. If appropriation and re-appropriation inevitably loom large in indigenous and postcolonial art, this is a re-appropriation that is not purely theoretical, but both subtle and profound. This acquisition was presented by the Art Fund and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation

More information

Title of artwork, date

Sarah Baartman Remembered, 2005

Date supported

2012

Medium and material

Set of seven linocut prints

Dimensions

Each 21 x 38.5 cm

Grant

2826.18

Total cost

2826.18

Content note: This object record is part of our archive and has not been updated since it was first published. It may contain inaccurate information or outdated language. Please get in touch if you think this record should be amended.

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