The Many Racial Effigies of Sara Baartman

Six African students enact a somber, silent dance. They stage a series of striking images at the base of South African artist Willie Bester's sculpture Sara Baartman, in the Chancellor Oppenheimer Library at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Their faces and bodies smeared with black paint, the students articulate their protest of Sara Baartman in explicitly racial terms, aligning their critiques of economic, colonial, and racial oppression under the sign of blackness.