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No strangers to beauty : contemporary black female artists, Saartje Baartman and the Hottentot Venus body

Saartje BaartJnan was a South African woman who signed a contract in 1810 that effectively made her the property of two white men wishing to exhibit her in Europe because of the shape and color of her body. In this text 1 examine two very different categories of representations of Baartman. First, I discuss images that were produced during Baartman's lifetime that discursively transformed her from a black woman with an identity into a pathologized body known as the Hottentot Venus, and second, I discuss the contemporary black female artists who are producing art inspired by Baartman in order to problematize the racist and sexist assumptions that have been inscribed on the black female body. My research encompasses important scholarship done by white feminist art historians, as well as that by black feminist theorists, and my thoughts on this subject have also been informed tremendously by work that has been done on the visual culture of slavery and on racist stereotypes by post-colonial scholars.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.97824
Date January 2006
CreatorsSkelly, Julia
ContributorsNelson, Charmaine (Supervisor)
PublisherMcGill University
Source SetsLibrary and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
Formatapplication/pdf
CoverageMaster of Arts (Department of Art History)
RightsAll items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated.
Relationalephsysno: NNNNNNNNN, Theses scanned by McGill Library., Theses scanned by McGill Library.

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