“Saartjie Baartman was 21 years old when she was taken from her native South Africa and shipped to London. Within weeks, she had made headlines and was talk of the social season of 1810, hailed as the Hottentot Venus for her exquisite physique and shapely, irresistible bottom. As her fame spread to Paris, Saartjie became a lightning rod for late-Georgian and Napoleonic attitudes toward sex and race, exploitation and colonialism, prurience and science. Stared at, stripped, pinched, painted, worshipped and ridiculed, she came to symbolize the erotic obsession at the heart of colonialism.”
Rachel Holmes, The Hottentot Venus
Most of us are familiar with how Saartjie Baartman’s story ends: her remains repatriated to South Africa, nearly 2 centuries after her body had been dissected and bottled in formaldehyde, this experiment said to have been done “all in the name of science”.
Sylvaine Strike proposes to explore the untold part of Saartjie’s extraordinary story: Her time spent on a ship between the two continents of Africa and Europe, having been promised a life of freedom, fame and fortune as the subject of fascination in a travelling show called The Hottentot Venus.
Research suggests that Saartjie was loaded onto a ship leaving Cape Town as cargo. She was the only woman on board, and the property of Hendrik Cesar, a black free slave who worked for Alexander Dunlop a millitary surgeon. Both men accompanied Saartjie on the journey she would not return from alive, let alone entact.
Cargo:Precious is a unique collaboration between four Standard Bank Young Artist Award winners: director Sylvaine Strike (Theatre 2006), choreographer PJ Sabbagha (Dance 2005 ) musician Concord Nkabinde (Jazz 2006) and Fana Tshabalala (Dance 2013). The Forgotten Angle Theatre Collaborative team up with performers Daniel Buckland and William Harding. In an imagined account of Saartjie Baartman’s first time at sea, this collaboration tells the tale never told of a voyage that held so much promise.
