Bianca Eshel Gershuni

Born in Bulgaria, 1932
Lives and works in Ra'anana

When one examines these paintings by Bianca Eshel Gershuni, who creates many distinct selfportraits, one may well wonder whether these are portraits of Frida Kahlo or of Eshel Gershuni herself. Her double tribute to Kahlo and Sarah Baartman turns our attention to two women who were transformed into symbols following their death.


Frida Kahlo

1907 - 1954
Mexico City, Mexico

Frida Kahlo is today a well-known and highly appreciated painter, whose persona and works are admired by many both within and outside the art world. Her turbulent life, physical disability and suffering, dramatic relations with her husband Diego Rivera (the greatest Mexican painter in the first half of the 20th century), and unique painterly expression of female experience have transformed her into an iconic figure.
Kahlo was born into the Mexican revolution, a time when her country was swept by hopes for a cultural, economic, and social renaissance. Throughout her life, she was a supporter of the communist revolution. Her paintings are based on her own experiences, and her numerous self-portraits, which highlight her black eyes and joint eyebrows, are among the most unforgettable portraits in the history of art.


Sarah Baartman

1790, South Africa
1815, France

Sarah Baartman was 20 years old when she was brought from South Africa to London by an English doctor and a Dutch settler. Having lured her to London with promises of a comfortable life, they engaged her as a performer in London freak shows under the stage name "The Hottentot Venus." Although some viewed her treatment as abusive, an investigator appointed by the attorney general was convinced that Baartman had come to London of her own free will, and that there was thus no reason to prosecute those responsible for her arrival there. She was later taken to perform in freak shows in Paris, where she was also made to participate in dubious "studies" concerning the sexuality of African women.
Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), the greatest French naturalist of his generation, defined her as belonging to a "borderline" race between man and ape. Baartman died in December 1815, five years after her arrival in Europe, when she was just 25 years old. Her body was transferred to Cuvier's laboratory at the National Museum of Natural History, where it was used to prepare a plaster cast. Cuvier then dissected Baartman's body, preserved her brain and inner genital lips in alcohol, and prepared her skeleton for exhibition. Baartman became the focus of an ongoing debate concerning the representation of ethnic and gender-based difference and otherness in a museum context.
In 2002, following an appeal made by Nelson Mandela to the French president, Baartman's remains were returned to South Africa and buried in an official state ceremony. By that time, she had become an iconic figure in black communities across Africa, Europe, and the United States - an emblem of the injustices of racism and male chauvinism. Her burial spot, in the region where she is thought to have been born, has become a pilgrimage site.