The Spectacle of the Hottentot Venus: The Thunder  Thigh Revue's Women of Substance (Click on the Image above to see a Larger Version)  

In 1986 artist Joyce Scott in collaboration with actress and comedian Kay Lawal formed the two-person performance troupe, The Thunder Thigh Revue. As the name of their performance partnership reveals, the two women in the Revue directly engaged issues surrounding the representation and perception of the body, and more specifically the black female body in American society. The first performance the Thunder Thigh Revue produced was called Women of Substance in which the tradition of exhibiting the non-white body in public spectacles was central.

 At the moment of Women of Substance, which both the reviewers and Joyce Scott conceive as the pinnacle of the performance, Scott appears in the guise of Saarjite Baartman. The lights in the performance space dim, sobering the atmosphere of the room. Scott walks slowly to the center of the stage wearing an extension on her buttocks made out of sponge. Only a sheer stocking covers the rest of her body. Scott, illuminated by a bright white spotlight, stares blindly out at the audience and begins a mournful cry.

 In what sounds like a low-pitched wail, Scott as Baartman speaks to the audience. She laments being far away from home in South Africa, and discusses her infinite loneliness since she was brought to "new shores." In her portrayal of Baartman, Scott tells of the violation and humiliation of her body as an object of public display. She also speaks of her influence in the popular culture of Europe in the nineteenth century, such as how a popular women's fashion device's like the bustle, a padded butt extension, was inspired by her. Although oft-times in Scott's monologue as Saarjite her individual words are difficult to discern, the overall drone of the wail itself conveys the sadness and pain of being on public display and the subject of ridicule. Through her song Scott gives Baartman a voice, imploring her audience to get past the spectacle of the body to perceive Baartman as a human being with feelings, desire, and subjectivity.

 Baartman is part of the cast of characters that Scott and Lawal employ to express "the pain and passion of being the 'other,' an overweight black woman in this society"(Stokes Sims 221 ). As Lowery Stokes Sims notes in "Aspects of Performance in the Work of Black American Women," throughout the performance, "Apparitions of women of substance float in and out of the performance giving testimony to their rage, their indignation, and their pride and determination" (Stokes Sims 219). In the scene that precedes the Hottentot Venus performance, Scott appears as Venus from Botticelli's famous painting, outfitted in sponge replicas of Venus' shell and flowing dirty-blond hair, whom she describes as the quintessential personification of beauty in Western art. By performing the two vignettes together, by introducing the audience to these two Venuses, Scott also highlights the vast discrepancies between the Western beauty ideal epitomized in Botticelli's Venus and the condemnation of the black female body in Western culture. While the latter becomes the celebrated subject of Western painting, the former's body is fetishized in public freak shows.  Other characters include a black Statue of Liberty and a dialogue with a refrigerator. All the women of substance in the performance encourage their audience to examine the stereotypes people hold based on physical appearance.  In the United States, the Thunder Thigh Revue appeared primarily in art museums and galleries, including The Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland Art Institute, and Sushi Gallery, San Diego. The pair also made numerous theater appearances. They staged Women of Substance at the Edinburgh festival in Scotland.  

Quote from Joyce Scott on Women of Substance:

 In an interview I conducted with Scott she said her aim in performance art is to seize "gross stereotypes and fuck with them." She explains, "There's a cesspool of stereotypes about looks, and I'm trying to put a new spin it ..." Scott recognizes that that her own physical appearance which she described as "a fat black woman with gappy teeth and wild hair," is reminiscent of "the stereotype that African-Americans have tried to debunk since the 1960s!" (Searle 48). Her own personal experience and awareness of how people visually perceive her, is a major impetus behind her investigation through performance of the ways people in society visually appraise, evaluate, and make stereotypic assumptions regarding "others" based on physical appearance.
 

See also a webpage on Representation.
 
 Bibliography:

Hammond, Leslie King, and Lowery Stokes-Sims. Art as A Verb: The Evolving Continuum, Installations, Performances, and Videos. Baltimore: Maryland Institute College of Art,  1988.

Searle, Karen. "Joyce Scott: Migrant Worker for the Arts." Ornament 15.4 (1992) :46-51.

Sims, Lowery Stokes. "Aspects of Performance in the Work of Black American Women Artists." Feminist Art Criticism: An Anthology. Ed. Arlene Raven and Cassandra Langer.  London: U.M.I Research Press, 1988.  207-225.