Saartjie

A Body Remembered, A Story That Refused to Stay Silent

Some histories are carried in books. 

Others are carried in bodies.

Saartjie was born from reflecting on the story of Sarah Baartman — often referred to as Saartjie Baartman — a Khoisan woman who became one of history’s most tragic symbols of exploitation, objectification, and colonial voyeurism.

Taken from South Africa to Europe in the early 1800s, her body was displayed and examined as spectacle. Even after her death, she was denied dignity. Her humanity was overshadowed by the gaze of others.

What struck me most while creating this work was not only the brutality of her story, but how familiar it still feels.

Even today, there are countless women who move through the world unseen, unheard, exploited, silenced, or reduced to surface value while carrying enormous emotional weight beneath it all. Different century. Different systems. Similar wounds.

In the artwork, the female form appears faceless.

At first, this happened instinctively. But the longer I sat with the piece, the more I realised the absence of a face became the entire point. It reflected the erasure of identity. The stripping away of personhood. The way history often remembers trauma while forgetting the individual inside it.

Then another layer revealed itself.

The shape of the head began to resemble a praying mantis looking directly back at the viewer.

That discovery stopped me in my tracks.

Within Khoisan mythology, the praying mantis is deeply symbolic — often viewed as a spiritual messenger, trickster, creator, and sacred figure connected to wisdom and transformation. Yet there is another irony hidden inside the image: the female praying mantis is known for consuming the male after mating.

Suddenly the work shifted.

What began as a painting about exploitation evolved into something more layered — a meditation on power, survival, reversal, femininity, rage, memory, and reclamation. The mantis became both witness and protector. Vulnerable and dangerous. Sacred and unsettling.

Visually, Saartjie balances softness with confrontation. The body emerges through layered marks, instinctive abstraction, and symbolic forms that feel simultaneously ancient and modern. Like much of my work, the piece intentionally holds contradiction. Beauty beside discomfort. Playfulness beside grief. Childlike freedom beside historical weight.

As a contemporary South African artist, I am increasingly drawn to the stories hidden beneath our landscapes and histories — the folklore, silences, spiritual symbols, and forgotten narratives that continue shaping who we are today. These stories do not belong only to museums or textbooks. They still live inside contemporary womanhood, identity, and collective memory.

Saartjie is not simply a portrait of one woman.

It is about all the women history tried to flatten into symbols instead of seeing as human beings.

And perhaps that is why the figure remains faceless.

Because she is no longer just one person.

She has become a mirror.


Part of the Lore & Legends Collection