Context (Analysis)
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 Venus; 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 Mandela’s request, in 2002. A number have artists have produced work in response to Baartman's history, but this series is of particular interest and importance. Marasela's prints allude to the iconography of Baartman' exhibition, but foreground a celebration of a life, and its passages. By reworking even the moments of Baartman'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.

Event Date 2005
Author: rachel hand

Context (Display)
Exhibited: The Power of Paper, Li Ka Shing Gallery, MAA, 14 February - 6 December 2015. D and E reproduced in the exhibition catalogue.

Event Date 14/2/2014
Author: Eleanor Wilkinson

Context (Acquisition Details)
Presented by The Art Fund and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. An acquisition project to build a collection of modern and contemporary work on paper from Australia, Canada and South Africa was undertaken over 2011-13 with the support of a grant under The Art Fund's RENEW programme. The collection was developed with the expert advice and generous assistance of Annie Coombes and Norman Vorano in relation to South African and Inuit artists respectively. Khadija Carroll, Anita Herle and Diana Wood Conroy also contributed to the selection process. Obtained from the Axis Gallery (Axis Gallery, 50-52 Dobbin Street, Brooklyn NY 11222, United States.)
Senzeni Marasela is a highly regarded Johannesburg artist. Her work has been extensively shown within South Africa, the US and Europe (though not as yet in the UK). She works particularly in linocut and needlepoint, producing prints and fabric works that address women’s experiences of trauma and nurture, and passages from rural homes to the city.

Event Date 7/3/2014
Author: maa

Description (CMS Description)
Set of seven linocut prints by Senzeni Marasela, inscribed, signed and dated by the artist. Titled 'Sarah Baartman Remembered', 2005. Edition 5/10. Each print is titled individually as follows:
A- 'Birth of Sarah'
B- 'Sarah Discovered'
C- 'Admiration of Sarah'
D- 'Departure'
E- 'Viewing of Sarah'
F- 'Nadir'
G- 'Resting Place of Sarah'


Event Date 7/3/2014
Author: maa

Description (CMS Description)
Acquired in silver frames but now transferred to matt black for MAA Power of paper exhibition- same sizes.
Event Date 9/1/2015
Author: maa