Tracey Rose

Sara Baartman (b. eighteenth century) was a Khoikhoi woman from the indigenous people of South Africa. In this photograph, she is portrayed by Rose walking nude in nature. She was enslaved by a British doctor who was fascinated with her buttocks and genitalia. In 1810, he took her to England to be exhibited in freakshows and gave her the stage name ‘Hottentot Venus’. The term ‘Hottentot’ is an offensive name to describe Khoikhoi people. ‘Venus’ refers to the Roman goddess of love and fertility. Baartman lived a difficult life and eventually died in Paris from an unknown disease.

Her body became an object of racist scientific research, and her remains were displayed in a French ethnographic museum for over 150 years before being repatriated to South Africa in 2002. In Rose’s work, the figure of Venus Baartman confronts Europeans’ obsession with Black bodies, although she is not depicted in a sexual manner. Her gaze is directed at a distant horizon, perhaps the moment prior to her encounter with the colonizers. The artist imagines Sara Baartman in the last days of freedom.