Bringing Julia Home
Laura Anderson Barbata’s quest to restore dignity to Julia Pastrana, once called “the ugliest woman in the world”.
Photo of Julia Pastrana, 1850s (all images courtesy of Laura Anderson Barbata)
There is a tempting, yet unscientific, tendency to make sense of artists by connecting them to their place of origin. I remember a Catalan artist friend of mine, Oriol Mora, who told me once that it made a lot of sense for Salvador Dalí to become a surrealist because the people from the region of Cataluña where he was from (Empordà) were known for their eccentricity, supposedly caused by climate: they use the term “un cap esventat” (“a windy head”) to refer to crazy behavior, in reference to the strong northern winds that blow through the region’s plains.
But going beyond geographic determinism, one of the most fascinating aspects about art making for me is how some of the most important art projects often do constitute a homecoming of sorts for their makers. This was the case, both conceptually and literally, of the artist Laura Anderson Barbata and her decades-long project around the repatriation of the body of Julia Pastrana to their native Sinaloa.
I have been thinking about this project over the last few days after various conversations I’ve had with Laura, who is a friend and studio neighbor. Anderson Barbata, born in Mexico and based in New York, is well-known for work that involves sculpture, performance, socially engaged art and the incorporation of costuming, ritual dance and conceptual practices. In 2003 she first heard about the story of Julia Pastrana when she was invited to develop designs for a production of the play The True History of the Tragic Life and the Triumphant Death of Julia Pastrana, the Ugliest Woman in the World by Shaun Prendergast.
Julia Pastrana (1834-1860) was an indigenous woman born in a small town of Ocoroni in the state of Sinaloa with hypertrichosis terminalis, a genetic condition where both face and body are completely covered with hair. In addition she had enlarged gums, a disease known as gingival hyperplasia. Because of her unusual physical condition, she soon became described as a “wolf woman” and after her mother passed away her uncle sold her to a circus. From that point forward Pastrana lived a life being exhibited as a circus freak, first in the United States and then in Europe with various demeaning names such as “the Baboon Lady”, “The Ape Woman” and “The Nondescript.”
The most sinister and despicable character in the Pastrana story is Theodore Lent. After meeting Pastrana when she was brought to perform to the United States, Lent eloped with Pastrana in 1854 and married her in Baltimore. After that, Lent technically acted as her manager but clearly monetized her act to his own personal benefit.
Julia Pastrana in dance attire, c. 1857-58
Pastrana’s case was so newsworthy that even Charles Darwin wrote about her. Lent instead used examinations of quack doctors and scientists to justify and amplify absurd and spectacular theories about Pastrana, including the suggestion that she was the result of the mating of a human and an ape.
Despite the humiliation and beast-like treatment she received throughout her life, Pastrana was by all accounts a gentle and talented woman. She spoke several languages and was an accomplished singer and dancer. During a tour in Moscow Pastrana gave birth to a son, who inherited her condition. The birth was a difficult one and the child died three days later. Pastrana herself died of postpartum complications two days after that. She was 25 years old.
Even while in life Pastrana was never treated as a true human being, in death the indignity toward her continued. Theodore Lent sold her body, as well as the body of her baby, to a doctor in Moscow who had them taxidermically preserved. Later, Lent re-purchased the bodies and continued exhibiting them. After Lent’s death, the bodies continued being toured and exhibited throughout the world, up to the early 70s in the U.S. The bodies were placed in storage where they were vandalized and abused several times—including the body of the baby which at some point was stolen. Pastrana’s body finally ended at the Anatomy Institute of the University of Oslo.
Pastrana and her son embalmed in separate glass display cases, The Penny Illustrated Paper, London, 1862
Pastrana on display in the United States, c. 1971-72
The story of Pastrana impacted Anderson Barbata deeply (“she was from Sinaloa, like me”, she told me). She became convinced it was paramount to find a way to get Julia back to Mexico (“I felt it was my duty”). She started reaching out to the University of Oslo to inquire about the body, but she got unhelpful and curt answers. She also contacted forensic anthropologist Nicholas Márquez-Grant, a lecturer at the Forensic Institute of Cranfield University in England, who agreed to advise her in the process. In 2005 she was invited to do a residency at the International Studio Program of the Office of Contemporary Art in Oslo; there she was able to get more institutional support to pursue the repatriation project, but as she proceeded it became clear that there needed to be a formal request from the Mexican government. So she then flew to her native Mazatlán and managed to meet with the governor of Sinaloa. She convinced him to make the repatriation request. After a process of back and forth paperwork coordinated by Laura, the request was granted in 2013. But someone had to properly identify the body– a difficult task as there was no DNA profile, no descendants—not even a birth certificate. She and Márquez-Grant had to fly to Oslo to ensure it was her.
Once there, they opened the wooden box that contained the body. It was very deteriorated, nude. However, “she still had her shoes on”, Laura remembers. There was also a pair of metal rods stuck through the body, likely a structure used to prop it up for exhibition purposes. Márquez Grant determined that the rods could not be taken out due to the risk of further damaging the integrity of the body. “But we need to take her shoes off”, he said. It was a symbolic but important gesture needed to give back her dignity in recognition of her being a human being and not an exhibition object. The body was placed in a sealed, zinc-lined coffin. Her shoes were placed inside, and Laura also placed a picture of Julia’s son on her body.
It was decided to bury Pastrana in Sinaloa de Leyva, a town adjacent to her hometown of Ocoroni. While this generated some protests from the Ocoroni townsfolk, it was the only nearby cemetery with 24-hour surveillance, an important consideration to ensure that her grave would be protected from being disturbed in the future. There were hundreds of people at the funeral, some of which were carrying protest signs: “Ni una Julia más” (“not one Julia more”). In an area like Sinaloa, which has been an epicenter of drug violence and one of several parts of Mexico where the forced disappearance of women is an ongoing occurrence, the event had a profound significance. The homecoming of Julia Pastrana and the honoring of her life in this way was also a recognition of the fact that the exploitation and systemic violence against women is not in the past. “When I saw how people identified themselves with Julia, I got goosebumps”, Laura said.
Laura Anderson Barbata and Fem Appeal, Lent y Julia, 2016; photograph on fiber paper.
Laura Anderson Barbata, Erik Tlaseca, and Jesús Fajardo, back and front cover, La extraordinaria historia de Julia Pastrana, zine no. 1, 2015, risograph
Anderson Barbata has processed this experience in the creation of many works: performances, photographs, costumes, drawings and zines. In many ways, while Julia Pastrana completed her way home nearly a decade ago, Laura herself has not yet completed her own reflective journey. Nor is the cultural context that caused the story of Pastrana in any way resolved: the horrific legacy of colonialist display and ethnographic voyeuristic domination (which has been addressed in the past by artists such as Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Carrie Mae Weems, and others) is still within us. Similarly, the legacy of colonial extraction of human remains is also yet unaddressed in many places: this week, for example, we learned that the Museum of Mankind in Paris still has 18,000 human skulls from Africa, Oceania, Cambodia and the Americas. And even today, the exhibition of human bodies for profit and under the thin veneer of educational or scientific purposes remains a profitable corporate spectacle, as exemplified by the Bodies exhibition in downtown Manhattan and other competing shows.
Julia Pastrana and Theodore Lent in a Polish advertisement, 1858
The past is, indeed, not even past. But returning to motivations, I told Laura about yet another thought that I had trouble fully articulating, but that I feel could be at the root of the deep empathy and determination with which she pursued this project: one can’t ever equate the notion of being exhibited as a freak in a circus to the life of an artist, but at the same time artists are uniquely sympathetic and sensitive of the act of ruthless public visual scrutiny: the way in which the person of the artist becomes an object of attraction, of exotic wonder, of violating bemusement, of morbid curiosity, of projection. As a result of that constant visual consumption artists become constructed, unreal entities, entertainers, conversation pieces, commodities.
Laura gave me a wonderful reflection in response to this. It made me think about something that I had never quite thought about before: even while artworks often become property, the act itself of making art is instead a form of liberation. She pointed at an engraving showing Theodore Lent and Pastrana, one where Lent is in a typical showman pose presenting Pastrana to the amazed public. “But then you look at her”— Laura says. “She is absorbed, looking at the distance in wonderment. She is elsewhere. I feel that the one thing that helps Julia is that she is an artist.” It becomes her way to safety.