| Hommage ā Sara Bartman |
| Experimental video | dv | color | 5'0'' | Dominican Rep. / Netherlands | 2007 |
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© Sarah Gerats
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Sara Bartman, more commonly known as Venus Hottentot, was a South African Khoisan woman who was brought to England to be exhibited in 1810. Her genitals and behind was beyond the understanding that the Europeans had of the human body at the time. She was considered as an animal and exhibited as an object. After her death her genitals and her brain and her body and skeleton were displayed in a Parisian museum. This performance is the result of an investigation into black bodies on stage. "The fact of wearing the body like a skin is a way to disguise myself but also to become myself through the other". The reason that Sara Bartman has become an icon for African people but also for European people is a reaction to the scientific and voyeuristic rape of her body. The vertical sculptures and monuments which glorified the heroic acts of Man, were now only the simple body of an African woman, silent, upright, awake.
Born in Santa Domingo, the Dominican Republic, on the 9th April 1982, she lives in Amsterdam and is doing a Masters in Fine Art at the Dutch Art Institute in Enschede, Holland. She completed her studies at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy of Amsterdam, where she also did her latest performances, "Hommage ā Sara Bartman", 2007, "Throne of Gold", 2007, "Trujillo's Island", 2007, "Trujillo", 2006.
List of exhibition, filmography...
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