Sarah Baartman Remembered

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

Provenance

The artist.