Covering Sarah by Senzeni Marasela

Covering Sarah is a series of illustrations produced with red thread on linen fabric by South African artist, Senzeni Marasela. These iconographies engage with the history of Sarah Baartman, a Khoikhoi woman disparagingly nicknamed the “Hottentot Venus" by European colonists who exhibited her as a “freak show” attraction and sexual novelty in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Marasela depicts herself and her mother covering Sarah, bringing to light and simultaneously reclaiming the traumatic history of a woman who had become a symbol of colonial exploitation, sexual objectification, racism, and later of postcolonial restitution.

Sources:
https://www.explore-vc.org/en/objects/senzeni-marasela-covering-sarah-i-v.html
https://africa.si.edu/exhibitions/current-exhibitions/i-am/