Sarah Baartman

Multimedia collage

24"x 36"

The moment I read about Saartije Baartmaan, and found out that she was refereed to as the "Hottentot" Venus, it became the catalyst for my work. The exploitation and commodification that she went through back then parallels the struggles of Black women today and exposes the biases placed on the Eurocentric standard of beauty.

This gave me the idea to create a diptych with Kim Kardashian's famous Paper Magazine cover shot by Jean-Paul Goude and that sent me down a rabbit hole with the problematic things he's said and the photoshoots he's done exotifying and objectifying the women protrayed in them. The many connections I found with this piece lead me to a mind map.

Near the center of this piece is a mechanical yet anatomical and fleshy organ-like machine representative of the systematic way in which women are being commodified and desensitized to harmful ideals being passed down to us.