by CHRISTINE REDFERN

For the past two years, Mara Verna has been working in France and South Africa on a project inspired by the story of Sarah Baartman. In 1810, 21-year-old Bartmaan, a Khoisan (indigenous) South African, got on a ship to London when promised she could make a fortune by displaying her body to curious Europeans. Dubbed the Hottentot Venus, she was exhibited as a savage at circus shows, bars and universities as “the highest form of animal life and the lowest form of human life.” Because of her unusually large buttocks and genitals, she became a source for grotesque stereotypes about race and African sexuality. She died an impoverished prostitute in Paris in 1816.

Baartman’s objectification did not end with her death. Scientists made a plaster cast of her body, preserved her skeleton, genitalia and brain and placed these on display at the Museum of Mankind in Paris until 1974. In 1994, the South African government asked for Baartman’s remains to be returned to her birthplace for burial.

Verna was in South Africa when the repatriation was finally accomplished this year. In both France and South Africa, Verna has filmed the people who are important to Baartman’s story. “Essentially I am trying to represent her story through living people - people who reflect her and her spirit, such as contemporary Khoisan people,” she says. “Aboriginal people are still considered sub-human. My work speaks about the history of objectification.”

Verna’s research has resulted in a Web site (www.hottentotvenus.com) and an upcoming exhibition in February at La Centrale (460 Ste-Catherine St W., #506). The exhibition, Rien n’a été perdu, incorporates video, drawings, collages, and prints, but no images of the Hottentot Venus. “I realized all the images of Baartman that are easily accessible are caricatures,” Verna explains. “So I decided to use caricatures as source material that I then rework. But to show Baartman’s image would be a continuation of her objectification when what I want to do is to present evidence of her humanity.” :