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Hello exhibitionistas, I hope you're doing very, very well.
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This is the time where we start blowing our noses, clearing our
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sinuses before recording. And believe me, Emily and I did
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just that before recording this episode.
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We're very excited. I am very excited to introduce
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you to an episode that is dedicated to Pamela Futsimo
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Sundstrom's exhibition at the Barbican titled This Will End in
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Tears. And I'm particularly excited
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because I have been following her work for a while and I love
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it. And I'm really interested in
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seeing how an artist's work develops.
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And I think it's been about a decade now that I've been
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looking at her work. So this was a particularly
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exciting and insightful episode for me.
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Another thing that I would like to remind you is that we have a
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Patreon page. And if you don't know what
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Patreon is, it is simply a platform that allows creatives
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to get paid for their work according to your financial
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possibilities. So if you can't put in any
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financial aid in it, other people will.
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And that allows us to bring add free, bonus free seasons to you
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and to everyone. So this allows us to have
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accessible content to all supported by a few or many,
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hopefully. So our Patreon page is on the
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show's notes. You can click on the link and it
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will take you there. It might be somewhat of a
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novelty for you and you space. I do leave my exhibition notes
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in there, so if you become a member, you will get them in
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your e-mail box. So that's nice if you'd like to
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read some thoughts that stem from the episode but don't
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really belong in there. But that could be interesting
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and kind of open up other doors for thinking about exhibitions,
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artists and art in general. So without further ado, let's do
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this. It's going to be a good one.
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Take care. Bye bye.
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I am Joanna Pyroneves, writer and curator and artistic
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director of Drawing Now Art Fair and this is the podcast where we
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research your favorite or about to turn so art artists after
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visiting their exhibition separately.
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Then we get together in our makeshift little recording
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studios and exchange views, experiences, impatient to talk
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to each other and to share our views with you.
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One of us researches the artist more deeply.
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And this time it's my turn to introduce you to the art of
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Pamela Fitzsimo Sundstrom, whose exhibition This Will End in
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Tears is open at the Barbican Curved Space until the 5th of
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January. Hello, I'm Emily Harding, an art
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lover and an exhibition goer, and I'm really looking forward
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to discussing Pamela Fitzimo Sundstrom's theatrical, playful,
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dark exhibition. But before we do so, Joanna, you
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had a big weekend culture. How was it?
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London has been abuzz with art because it's freeze week, so
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it's a rather intense moment in the art world that I try to dip
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my toes in but not drown in being the introvert that I am.
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I think there's a whole episode to do about being an introvert
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and working in the art world or doing events at a think tank.
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That's there's a lot to say about that.
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But one of the very nice things, and there's very nice things
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about this week is that you have the sculpture park around the
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famous tent of the art fair. So that was fun.
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I'm still waiting for an artist to make a sculpture for the
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squirrels because they get really excited with the
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sculptures. That would be nice.
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I mean, what are we waiting for? Is all I'm asking.
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Let's just say it was cold here first.
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You know exactly. Joanna Nevis.
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Yeah. Exactly.
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I mean, honestly, who's your audience?
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Like, think about that during this whole crazy week.
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It was so funny because the week started with one of our sons
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telling us to watch couples therapy on BBC, which, you know,
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what was that about? Which we did, by the way, with
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them. It was really interesting.
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And then I took Diogo to watch Kohalifa jazz the substance, and
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I was blown away by yeah. I thought it was incredible.
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I I Demi Moore is so great. I mean amazing.
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It was a great movie. I mean really gory, you know I
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mean it. Was it's not for everyone
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because we've had some mixed reactions amongst the people you
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know and here in our house and it's body horror.
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I have seldom been in a theatre where I feel the film physical.
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The last time I felt that, and it was at home mind you, but I
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can only imagine how it is in the in the theatre it was with
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Clockwork Orange and Freaks. This film is kind of a a mix
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between Freaks and The Clockwork Orange kind of put together for
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me. It's a really unusual movie, you
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know, even as someone who enjoys a bit of horror, this is this is
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again, something. Oh, this is beyond.
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But I mean, for me, I you know, I haven't been out for checking
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out freeze at all and it's related, you know, hubba Baloo
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around it. So I'll live vicariously through
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you and through Instagram as well, which is full of lots of
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free stuff. But I did pick up a brilliant
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book of short stories called Ghost Roots.
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I don't know if you've heard anything about this.
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It's by an author called Penny Agunda.
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And it's her first book, which is annoying 'cause it's just
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really, really good. Like to be out of the gate.
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Like, she's so good. Yeah.
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And it's won a bunch of accolades and it's a final.
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It's a finalist for the 2024 National Book Award, shortlisted
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for the Kane Prize for African Writing.
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Wow. And I'm just a couple of stories
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in. But it's so, you know, when you
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read something and you're like, OK, I just never really felt
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this world before. I've never really felt, you
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know, this kind of storytelling before.
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So I'm only a couple of stories in.
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So I can't articulate it, but I'm enjoying it so much.
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So she's Uganda's Nigerian writer.
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And we've done a bunch of work on Nigeria, you know, at work on
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a geopolitical sense. And there is this Michael Palin
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documentary that I watched earlier this year, which was
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great. We actually had him come to the
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stage at work as well and talk about this with one of his
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British Nigerian producers who worked on The Who worked on the
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film. And so it was, you know, so I,
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I've kind of had, yeah, an introduction into Nigeria in
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that sense. But this is like a very
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different doorway in and it, yeah, it feels really exciting.
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So yeah, go check it out. Ghost route.
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So good. So, Joanna, do you want to
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introduce us to the artist this week, Pamela Fatima Sundstrom?
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Absolutely. So this time we're looking at an
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artist born in 1980 in Machudi, Botswana, who then went on to
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live in different parts of Africa in Southeast Asia.
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So Pamela Futsimo Sundstrom moved to the US in 1998 and
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received the BA with highest honors from the University of
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North Carolina at Chapel Hill in International Studies with a
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concentration in Transnational Cultures in 2004.
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She received her MFA from the Mount Mount Royal School of Art
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at the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2007.
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She now lives in the Netherlands after a sort of peripatetic
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life, which probably will still be.
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So we don't know if she's going to stay in the in the
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Netherlands or not, but that's where she's living now.
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So she attributes her passion for research to this academic
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background, which which translates differently.
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As I was saying, between the beginning of her career and now,
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I would say since 20/17/18, her work changed a little bit, which
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is absolutely normal. She's been working for a while
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now. This shift in her iconography is
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hinged on the way drawing is taking shape and we can say that
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this literacy is there in the process as well.
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And the outcome of her work, she developed an alter ego as well,
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called as me with. She's a way to grasp constant
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unfolding of her identity and identities in general, I guess.
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So that's something that you see a lot in her drawings since the
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beginning, which is that there's the figure, the presence of a
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human figure, and it's very often the same person all the
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time. And she actually actually uses
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her own body and her own image to do so.
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Yeah, she that's a theme in this show too.
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Definitely. And absolutely, that's a theme
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in this show. So this research and this
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interest she's had on many, many things takes us to an aspect of
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her work, which is that up until recently, the works would were
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layered as if each element in it was at least translucent or, and
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contained other images or revealed images behind at
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different scales. So she started by placing human
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figures in a sort of constellated image with grids,
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charts, elements of nature and people doing something.
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And this was done laboriously, painstakingly, with a very,
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very, and I cannot stress this enough, very refined drawing
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technique that gave all these layers a sense of unity.
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So drawing kind of brought all of these things together, but
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also broke them apart. And it was very almost sci-fi
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kind of images and the works from this period.
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So up until I would say 2017, eighteen were mostly blue.
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So for her, this was kind of an outer space blue because she was
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focused on trying to learn about geography, geology, physics, and
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all kinds of subjects that would cater to this dimension of the
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individual versus the universe. And perhaps not the universal, I
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would think, because very literally the universe and the
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grand scheme of all things and what we're made of.
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She was looking into physics a lot, like really the discipline
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of physics was the main concern for her.
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So like I was saying, a couple of years before the pandemic,
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this very specific perspective was a tiny bit dislocated, not
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only from drawing to painting, which is still, she still sees
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as drawing, but on a more resistant surface.
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And we'll get to that, but also from the blue palette to a more
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earthy set of colours. Which brings us to this
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exhibition. She was interested in making her
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work seductive, which I think it is, but in a sort of intelligent
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way, right? Feels more cerebral.
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Seductive in a cerebral sort of way, yeah.
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That's exactly. I was trying to look for an
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expression and I think that's exactly it.
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Yeah. You were taken by the hand into
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rather crazy stories like in this exhibition, as if you were
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listening to a story told by the silky voice of Vanessa Redgrave,
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right? Yeah, totally.
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You're kind of basking in that vibration, but also realizing
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that this seductive storytelling also allows you to be taken into
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very dangerous territories. So one of the things that's
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really uncanny is that there's a focus on the human figure, but
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usually but not always a non white character that is
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corresponds to this work on the alter ego and on this on the
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when you see her, you see that the figure, the human figures
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that you see playing different roles look like the artist
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herself. So they look like her, but she's
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calling them something different.
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Yes, yes. Well, in the beginning she had
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Asmi, who was the alter ego, and now she's very clearly building
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narratives and making up characters also based on family.
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She started digging into family history, family photographs.
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So she went from looking at anatomy books, looking at
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National Geographic images, early images of African people
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and indigenous people. And so she was in that kind of
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territory of science or a sort of pseudo academic territory.
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And now she's more into a a sort of personal constellation of
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stories that she doesn't put out there as being personal, but she
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her archival research kind of changed and became more
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personal. But having settled her work is
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not hyperrealism. So for those who can't go to the
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show or haven't seen her work before, she built a way to
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produce recognizable imagery that pays homage to the history
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of drawing, where the characters are always drawn and therefore
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artificial or fictional. So you have a sense that she's
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not trying to portray herself as she is.
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She's not digging into her own image.
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She's using her image to tell a story, almost like a cartoon in
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some ways, although it's not cartoony as as it were.
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Oh, the reason why she uses her own body is interesting because
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she says in an interview that she doesn't condemn, you know,
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people using other bodies and other images.
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But for her, she was kind of looking into the history she's
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very aware of, and we'll talk about that, of colonialism, post
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colonialism times, especially having lived in South Africa.
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And she says that being a, a woman of colour and realizing
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how in art history other bodies were othered, you know, other
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bodies were othered and especially women were treated
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like images of desire, but also images of enslavement.
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She didn't want to use other people's bodies and she uses her
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own because she can use and abuse it, because it's her body
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and she can do whatever she wants with it.
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Interesting. Yeah, that's interesting.
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Yeah. It's interesting that that gave
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her more freedom rather than less freedom, you know, because
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I think there's so many artists and people that would be like,
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well, yeah, I can imagine this scenario, but boy, putting me
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in, it's a bit too hot to the touch, you know?
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But yeah, it's interesting that she had sort of the opposite
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stance on that. And that's how the background of
00:15:48
an artist is interesting. I don't know much about her.
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She's around 44 years old or something, so there isn't a lot
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of things out there about her, but there's quite a few
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interviews if you know our listeners are interested.
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There's really like a bunch of interviews on YouTube and online
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that really interesting. But she does mention at some
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point that she worked as an actress and a dancer.
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She's used to using her own body, so it's interesting to see
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that for her. It's not a constraint.
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Like you say, it's freeing, but it wouldn't be for someone else.
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Yeah, but I think it also makes for that cerebral intelligence
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that she has as well, right, That atmosphere.
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And it also creates this idea of the alter ego, the doppelganger,
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the double, and having spoken about the substance that works.
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Yeah, I was just thinking that. Yeah, totally.
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And it's like, you know, you wonder how she negotiated her
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own, her own internal dialogue about what she should or
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shouldn't look like in these images.
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You know, I mean, it's got to be in there somewhere, right?
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I mean, she is not immune to societal pressure and she is,
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you know, living in a place and is of a place and.
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And all of that would inform whether or not she's playing
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with an alter ego, if it's her own image, how much she can
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really dissect and pull apart from those beliefs she might
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have about who she is and what looking this way might mean as
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opposed to looking that way. I saw her many minutes ago doing
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an A talk in her gallery, Tiwani Gallery at the time.
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Which was Tiwani Gallery. We love Tiwani Gallery.
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They have amazing artists. And I remember looking at her
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and then looking at the works and thinking, oh, you know,
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because you kind of start connecting the dots.
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And I find that this idea that she has of this kind of fluid
00:17:44
identity is patent in the figure, the human figure, which
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is kind of racially ambiguous because I thought it was an
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Asian character more like in terms of facial traits.
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And I love that one of her shows when she at Goodman Gallery in
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Johannesburg recently was called You'll be sorry.
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And she says it's about the people who leave, who go away
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are told you'll be sorry for leaving, You'll come back,
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You'll be sorry for wanting to be an artist.
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You'll go back to a proper work. And you know, and she's, she has
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this consciousness of how movement and displacement
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affects your identity, you know, and, and, and it's much more
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than appearances that she's interested in.
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She's interested in the culture and in the the nuances of what
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you inherit wherever you are in the world and from what's
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starting point you enter your life in or from and then where
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you go to. And I think we can relate a lot
00:18:50
to that being ourselves. You know, this place, I mean,
00:18:54
people who voluntarily went places rather than, you know,
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she's not, I don't know if you're confronted without being
00:19:01
American, but being Portuguese. People often think that I'm an
00:19:05
immigrant from the diaspora or that my parents were living in
00:19:10
France. And I am that kind of
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intellectual immigrant. And so there's always a kind of,
00:19:16
for me, there's a kind of shifting of identities that's
00:19:20
very strange. And I have and I, I, I, it's not
00:19:25
that I had to solve it, but it's something that I need that
00:19:31
allows me, gives me the freedom to be a bit more fluid, I guess.
00:19:35
And when I talked to my Portuguese peers who were second
00:19:38
generation immigrants, they have a different experience than I
00:19:42
do. So there's, I think there's a
00:19:44
difference in that somehow I kind of feel felt a connection
00:19:47
with her, the academic side and the this kind of, I studied
00:19:51
abroad, you know, that's kind of thing, which I, the good, good
00:19:55
student kind of thing. And the rebellious side that
00:19:58
she's in at the moment, that we'll talk about later, that I
00:20:01
sensed I may be wrong, but I mean, from her interviews, I.
00:20:05
The sort of rebellion about what it means to be a female artist
00:20:09
and to be an artist and to be an artist makes drawings and you
00:20:12
know, we'll, we'll talk about it anyway.
00:20:14
Going back to kind of her history.
00:20:16
So the colours are important as I mentioned before.
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So Blues were part of the work for a long time because she was
00:20:23
concerned with questions of physics and almost sci-fi
00:20:26
related issues. But now she uses more earthy
00:20:29
tones as she started delving, like I was talking about before,
00:20:34
into a more personal catalogue of narratives.
00:20:37
So she's doing a sort of personal archaeology, it seems,
00:20:40
and thinking of her own ancestry in terms of this quests that she
00:20:45
has about the universe, the history, the formation of things
00:20:48
as they are. Because there's being interested
00:20:50
in, you know, physics. She's also interested in history
00:20:55
and because she was concerned with that, her mind went to the
00:20:58
past and specifically to the histories of colonialism and
00:21:01
art. We painted with pigments, with
00:21:04
ochres and sienas drawn from the earth in prehistory.
00:21:08
And she was also thinking of Botswana of South Africa, where
00:21:13
the landscape is earthy brown, yellow and the sky is white with
00:21:17
heat. So the colours changed
00:21:19
completely in her palette. And now the palette also
00:21:25
includes another colour that comes from the wood panels.
00:21:28
Yeah. Wow.
00:21:30
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was going to ask you about
00:21:33
that because, and we'll talk about this more, she uses wood
00:21:35
panels in this exhibition. Is this something that she's
00:21:38
used previously? Yes, she's done it before.
00:21:41
I think it's a relatively new thing, and she says that she
00:21:46
likes to work with the kind of patterns of the wood.
00:21:50
Yeah, right now. Let's talk about that more
00:21:52
later, because I think there's a lot of.
00:21:54
There's a lot to say that yeah, right.
00:21:56
So I just want to quote an interview that she did for
00:22:00
Studio International on the 24th of September of 2020, where she
00:22:06
talks about the figure and traces it back to the point
00:22:10
where it disappeared. So it's really interesting to
00:22:12
see how she was a bit conflicted, conflicted about the
00:22:15
figure before going into the exhibition where the figure is
00:22:19
everything basically. So quote there was a time when
00:22:25
the figure dropped away from my work.
00:22:27
I stopped using it altogether for a few years when I was
00:22:31
suspicious of how easy it is to tell stories using the figure.
00:22:36
Around the time that I first moved to Johannesburg, I really
00:22:39
started focusing on space and landscape and scientific
00:22:43
diagrams, as well as abstraction and other forms of notation to
00:22:48
suggest story or time or space without relying so much on the
00:22:53
figure. Shortly after I became pregnant,
00:22:56
and certainly right after I gave birth to my son, it became
00:22:59
impossible not to use or deal with the figure in my work
00:23:02
again. The experience of being
00:23:04
pregnant, of carrying a child, of giving birth to a child was
00:23:08
truly transformative and had such an impact on my ideas
00:23:11
around bodies as vessels, around ideas of history, heredity,
00:23:16
genetics, DNA, biology, that it was undeniable that the figure
00:23:21
was going to return within the work.
00:23:25
Wow. Isn't this incredible?
00:23:27
I find this quote incredible because we've talked about women
00:23:32
who talk about giving birth and talk about the body, and she
00:23:36
goes immediately into heredity, history, DNA.
00:23:41
She cannot help herself from being from attaching a very
00:23:46
visceral experience to a kind of a wider scientific context.
00:23:50
And I love that. It's so incredible.
00:23:54
It just says so much about who she is and where her head is and
00:23:58
how she approaches her work. And and I love that.
00:24:02
I mean, you know, on a very basic level, it's like giving
00:24:04
birth to a human, puts the human, puts the figure, the
00:24:08
image, the figure back into her work itself.
00:24:11
Yeah. Nice connection.
00:24:12
Yeah, that's a really nice connection.
00:24:14
She also describes as her practices building and erasing,
00:24:18
building and erasing, building and erasing.
00:24:21
So she's interested in what remains in the remnants of
00:24:24
cultures and rituals of knowledge and power.
00:24:27
So the way she draws and makes an image, she is such a devoted
00:24:33
maker. Like we can say she's cerebral.
00:24:36
She's just a very complete human being.
00:24:38
I mean, she's incredibly intelligent, well read.
00:24:41
She has an imagination that is wild.
00:24:43
And then she spends hours and hours making Les, working on her
00:24:50
subjects and creating these very textured images that again,
00:24:55
unified somehow. And now it would, I mean, it's
00:24:58
really incredible. And so the way she draws is that
00:25:01
of course, because she layers and she creates those layers of
00:25:04
narrative, She works, makes the images and scraps, scraps,
00:25:08
scraps or puts another layer on them.
00:25:10
And I saw a video on YouTube where she has this beautiful
00:25:13
image and she's talking and she's working, she's talking
00:25:15
about her process and she's just applying.
00:25:19
She's erasing a bit and then she's applying playing another
00:25:21
Leron on top of the a bit of the perfect, perfect, perfect shape
00:25:27
that she had just done. And I was like, woman, what are
00:25:29
you doing? Like that is beautiful.
00:25:31
And, you know, this, this, this ability she has of building
00:25:37
these images very carefully, very, you know, painstakingly
00:25:42
and having kind of this courage of like taking away, putting it
00:25:45
back, taking away, putting something else back.
00:25:48
And it's, and really what she's interested in terms of the
00:25:51
culture, what remains of the culture, what is lost?
00:25:55
What are we, why are we, you know, dressed in a certain way
00:26:00
while also using these local, you know, patterns in South
00:26:03
Africa, this mix of things and remnants of things that really,
00:26:07
really interest her. And she's, you know, now that
00:26:11
she's in the Netherlands, for example, she says that she's
00:26:13
engaging with the romantic artists, for example, she's
00:26:16
looking at European art. And she says that from her that
00:26:20
I think that's one of the most the things that I wanted to
00:26:22
finish with, with with her biography is that it's so
00:26:25
interesting to see someone who has this very broad education
00:26:30
and very broad experience. But that ultimately comes from
00:26:35
the African country, the South Asian country where she lived,
00:26:38
you know, during most of her younger years and coming into
00:26:43
the European art history as well.
00:26:46
And she says that she's much more aware now that she's living
00:26:49
in The Hague, in Amsterdam and in the Netherlands, that she's
00:26:54
claiming a space in that history.
00:26:57
So she's starting to paint as well.
00:27:00
She in, although she sees it as drawing, she's using oils and
00:27:03
she's using, you know, a canvas. And she does a lot of pattern
00:27:07
making, which is when you're in the Netherlands, Mondrian, all
00:27:09
of that, you know, and, and this kind of pattern needs
00:27:13
abstraction that they have over there.
00:27:15
That's also, you know, something that she's claiming for herself,
00:27:20
but coming at it from a completely opposite angle that
00:27:23
someone who had been born in in in the Netherlands.
00:27:26
So that's also really interesting, I think in terms of
00:27:29
the exhibition that we will be talking about.
00:27:33
So yeah, this is basically my my presentation, a very quick and
00:27:37
probably very elliptical presentation of this awesome
00:27:40
artist. No, that's brilliant and it just
00:27:43
it just fills in so many lines from just seeing the exhibition,
00:27:47
which I really enjoyed and obviously we'll talk about next.
00:27:50
But about, you know, who she is as a person.
00:27:53
And and you're right, she does does feel like, you know, that
00:27:57
fundamental kind of artists that, you know, has has lived
00:28:02
such a full life and has had these other interests and takes
00:28:07
in sort of history and travel and legacies.
00:28:12
And, you know, in this in this very intentional way, it seems.
00:28:19
Yeah. So brilliant.
00:28:20
Great. So why don't we take a short
00:28:22
break and then we can come back and dig into the exhibition
00:28:26
itself? Yeah, I think you might need a
00:28:29
coffee or a tea. So let's do that, Yeah.
00:28:33
Don't we all? So let's do it.
00:28:35
See you in a bit. So, all right, well, welcome
00:28:52
back. Let's get to the exhibition.
00:28:55
We're here at the Curve at the Barbican, and it's looking
00:28:58
starkly different than the last time we were here for Yan and
00:29:01
Papri. Through that.
00:29:04
Shouldn't be a more different feel.
00:29:06
So rather than feeling like you're walking into a club, but
00:29:09
you're sort of walking into a 1950s film set with us.
00:29:14
So I mean, which I have to say is why I've grown to love this
00:29:18
space so much. It has a real chameleon kind of
00:29:21
quality to it, and the artists draw on the inspiration from the
00:29:24
space and from the Barbican and it always feels quite
00:29:28
unexpected. So this is no different.
00:29:31
And this is a really unique exhibition for a few reasons.
00:29:35
Her use of materials which we've sort of alluded to her use of,
00:29:39
of wood and wood panelling to put the images on, There's this
00:29:43
incredible set that I mean. It's so crazy.
00:29:49
It was so crazy and and it really had.
00:29:53
I was wondering how you'd react to it.
00:29:55
I loved it so much. I loved it so much, which we
00:29:58
will certainly get to. And then, you know, she has this
00:30:02
great exploration within the images themselves of the femme
00:30:06
fatale. And as you say, you know, from
00:30:10
her history, she brings in so much a nuance to it and a very,
00:30:15
very different take on this whole sort of, you know, film
00:30:20
femme fatale trope that there is out there.
00:30:22
So there are 19 paintings and drawings that are part of the
00:30:26
exhibition that are all listed as scenes in a film.
00:30:29
So when you look at the catalogue, it's like scene 38
00:30:33
and scene 19 or what have you. And they look at they, you know,
00:30:39
when, when you're looking at these images, they look
00:30:41
Hitchcock esque. There's lots of space in them.
00:30:45
Kind of reminded me of Edward Hopper paintings where there is
00:30:51
a coolness within them and the the figures themselves feel
00:30:58
alone together in in a way. Yeah.
00:31:02
But they're also full of tension, anticipation, suspense.
00:31:05
The intrigue is just absolutely a bounds from them.
00:31:10
So you see scenes of people, you know, watching other people
00:31:14
unawares and, you know, people walking with a knife on the
00:31:18
brink of violence. And there's that classic kind of
00:31:21
film noir scene of two people close up in a car, you know, in
00:31:27
the front of a car, a driver and a passenger.
00:31:30
And while you're in it, you're sort of kind of cheering for the
00:31:35
protagonist or worried about the protagonist.
00:31:38
And you kind of want to say things like look out, you know,
00:31:43
you know, I do, you know, that's the there's a there's a bit of
00:31:49
that in there, but I want to read a bit from the exhibition
00:31:52
guide that outlines the story being told because I think it's
00:31:55
it's done very well. So this is a new body of work
00:31:58
that presents the story of Bettina, a new character in the
00:32:01
artist ever developing, ever evolving cast of alter egos.
00:32:06
Bettina arrives in a mid century colonial outpost, learns to
00:32:11
navigate the subtleties of her new real life.
00:32:14
We're invited to explore our protagonist world through a
00:32:17
series of film sets designed in collaboration with Remico Osorio
00:32:22
Labat. Thanks for that pronunciation
00:32:24
guidance earlier on that Joanna. These sets evoke domestic
00:32:28
spaces, colonial bureaucracies, travel, waiting rooms, religious
00:32:33
gatherings, walking through these spaces, which are
00:32:36
punctuated by painted scenes of Bettina's new life and connected
00:32:41
by ramps and wooden walkways. So this is the the film set part
00:32:45
of it. A multivariate narrative
00:32:48
unfurls, exploring the ideas of migration, belonging, and
00:32:53
freedom. So the The guide continues.
00:32:57
Sundstrom uses the aesthetic and narrative conventions of film
00:33:02
noir to question the idea of the femme fatale, a reductive and
00:33:06
often misogynistic depiction of women used in film.
00:33:10
Taking inspiration from the Barbican as a space for
00:33:13
performance and spectacle, Sundstrom draws a connection
00:33:18
between the artifice of film making and the social constructs
00:33:21
that control, regulate and punish women who challenge the
00:33:25
norm. So that's from the exhibition
00:33:28
guide. And and yeah, I just love the
00:33:31
performance that's involved in the exhibition itself.
00:33:36
And a good text. Yeah, it's a good text.
00:33:39
A good. Text.
00:33:40
Totally. It gives you enough without
00:33:42
giving you too much. And it doesn't bedazzle you with
00:33:46
lots of references to, you know, things that you know, might not
00:33:51
actually matter to you as you're as you're as you're walking
00:33:54
through it. But I just wanted to do a quick
00:33:56
aside about the name Bettina because I got curious about why
00:34:00
would she name her character Bettina?
00:34:02
I also wondered actually. Thanks for doing that.
00:34:05
And it's an unusual name, right? You don't hear it very much.
00:34:08
There's sort of derivatives or, or the kind of near neighbors of
00:34:12
it with Elizabeth Betty, you know, that kind of thing.
00:34:17
But according to ancestry.com, the name derives from the Hebrew
00:34:21
name Elishaba, which means God is my oath.
00:34:26
But it was widely used in the Italian Renaissance scene.
00:34:30
You get the sense of this main character as having a strong
00:34:33
inner compass, but is also being quite artistic.
00:34:37
So it might not be as popular as some contemporary names, but
00:34:41
Bettina endures as a choice that exudes individuality and a sense
00:34:46
of strength. Furthermore, it's managed to
00:34:48
transcend cultural and linguistic boundaries, gaining
00:34:52
recognition and admiration on a global scale.
00:34:56
Whether it's in the world of art, literature or simply among
00:34:59
families, the name Bettina remains a beautiful testament to
00:35:03
the enduring power of spirituality and personal
00:35:05
commitment. And so when I read that, I
00:35:08
thought, you know, this really feels like a fitting name for
00:35:12
this protagonist. I mean, who has, you know, a
00:35:15
very strong. Yeah, that strong inner compass
00:35:19
and has a bit of a flair. I mean, you have that Italian,
00:35:24
you know, Renaissance connection.
00:35:27
Do you know any Bettina? I do, actually.
00:35:30
I do. And I remember thinking it was a
00:35:33
German colleague of mine. And I remember thinking, what an
00:35:36
unusual name, what a beautiful name, Bettina.
00:35:40
Yeah, Inna like as well, kind of.
00:35:43
It's very feminine, isn't? It it is a very feminine name,
00:35:47
Yeah. But the B gives us a sort of
00:35:49
strength. So I understand the kind of
00:35:51
thing of like strong moral compass, but at the same time
00:35:54
artistic and sensitive. I mean, it's yeah, it's a
00:35:58
beautiful name. Yeah.
00:35:59
Love it. But yeah, so as you go into the
00:36:01
exhibition, all the scenes are drawn and painted onto wood
00:36:04
panels. So sometimes the panels are in
00:36:07
quadrants, sometimes they're two by three, sometimes a series of
00:36:12
panels. And they're big.
00:36:15
I mean, they're really big. Yeah.
00:36:17
What I found fascinating about this was how the wood grain and
00:36:23
the lines of the panels created their own tension and movement
00:36:27
within the image that she created.
00:36:30
So they, the way she was constructing the image was in
00:36:35
such a deep relationship with the grains.
00:36:39
You can kind of feel her working against this natural grain
00:36:43
within the wood itself and the way that she is, you know,
00:36:47
setting up her horizon or points of interests within that.
00:36:51
And you know, her, her, her individual lines, creating some
00:36:56
tension against them. Mm, hmm, mm hmm.
00:36:59
And then also the lines that are created by the panels
00:37:03
themselves. So the panels meet either at six
00:37:05
panels, 4 panels, what have you, that those are creating
00:37:09
additional lines in there that are adding tension to the image
00:37:15
itself. I mean, you know, it's like as I
00:37:18
was walking through, my first thought was like, wow, what
00:37:20
incredible pain. Like it must have been to work
00:37:24
with several panels and like get things to join up correctly.
00:37:28
We've all wallpapered maybe at some point in life, you know,
00:37:32
it's like getting the lines to, you know, speed up and kind of
00:37:36
work and, and, and it's, it's all done so meticulously.
00:37:44
I mean, it gives the, the grain itself gives the images of
00:37:48
fluidity. And again, the images that are
00:37:51
on them are sort of cooler cerebral Hopper esque, Hitchcock
00:37:57
esque kind of images. That's the story that they're
00:38:00
telling. But then they're on this very
00:38:03
fluid markings of the grain and with all of this extra tension
00:38:08
within the the panels. I don't know if you came across
00:38:12
anything where she's talking about that choice of material.
00:38:17
The wood specifically, yeah. So there's different reasons.
00:38:21
One of the reasons is exactly what you say, which is the the
00:38:26
fact that the lines of the wood can contribute to making a
00:38:29
drawing. And it's no one that she speaks
00:38:32
about the first pigments used in prehistory, because in the caves
00:38:35
already you can see that some, you know, protuberances in the
00:38:39
wall are used within the drawings of prehistoric drawings
00:38:42
and paintings. So she's working like that.
00:38:45
She's using the the wood like a wall, as it were.
00:38:50
For her. It really is not giving into
00:38:54
yielding to painting because she's not only painting, she's
00:38:57
not producing. She's very connected to drawing
00:39:00
because she talks about drawing as a provisional image.
00:39:03
So while you're making a drawing, you're still thinking
00:39:06
about what you're doing before the idea is stuck.
00:39:13
And if you look at the, the, the, the images that she
00:39:16
produced for this show, especially the patterns, she
00:39:19
leaves them as drafts or annotations.
00:39:22
So there, it's really interesting how she can get so
00:39:25
intensely into the figure, into some aspects of the drawings and
00:39:29
the paintings, because this is a pencil and oil.
00:39:32
So it's a completely hybrid kind of material onto the wood that
00:39:37
is already producing these fluid drawings and lines that she's
00:39:42
taking for herself as she makes the image.
00:39:45
But the wood is also the lines of history.
00:39:48
This, I mean, it is the lifetime of the lifespan and the growth
00:39:52
of a living being. So she's also taking in that
00:39:55
aspect of the material, which is like a wall as she's layering.
00:40:01
As usual, she produces layers and layers and layers of
00:40:03
meaning. And this time, she does it.
00:40:06
In a way that also allows her not to be so laborious about her
00:40:12
work. So she's she says that because
00:40:14
she did all drawings. All drawings are incredibly
00:40:18
painstaking. I mean, it really is a labor of
00:40:22
love. I mean, it takes a long time to
00:40:24
make their ephemeral. It's going to be painted over
00:40:27
and you're there in a space that is not your space.
00:40:30
You're in the middle of the museum with the whole team
00:40:32
around you and the life of the museum around you or wherever.
00:40:35
And so she realized that at one point she was working on the
00:40:39
mural drawing. She looked around and she
00:40:43
realized that everyone was being paid except her and she thought
00:40:47
I am putting so much work into this.
00:40:50
Her drawings are so incredibly delicate, intricate, LED, even
00:40:57
the the drawings she made on paper that she thought, OK, I
00:41:02
must allow myself to get some shortcuts in at some point.
00:41:09
And there's another aspect of it, which is that, you know,
00:41:13
that she talks about this good girl, good student thing of like
00:41:16
wanting to make, wanting to produce, wanting to show that
00:41:19
there's a lot of work into the drawings.
00:41:22
And now she's letting go and she's like, I'm going to let the
00:41:25
material work its magic as well. And, and you can see it in the
00:41:29
drawings that they're very intentional at points of very
00:41:31
lead and super worked on. And other bits are more
00:41:35
annotations and they work really well together.
00:41:38
And then she uses the oil paint, the oil paint to create
00:41:41
atmospheres and to create a whole ambiance just with one
00:41:46
stroke of colour. And there's another thing is
00:41:49
that she works on the paper a lot.
00:41:52
And she realized that the paper couldn't endure the the way it
00:41:57
was. She was hurting it.
00:41:58
And at some point it has. And so she had to move on to
00:42:03
canvas. She had to move on to wood
00:42:06
panels, which is what she's found recently that kind of
00:42:10
allows her, they don't break. They don't tear and that's and
00:42:15
so she can do a lot on them and they also contribute with
00:42:19
something already as it were to start with, because they already
00:42:22
have line. And at the same time, it is a
00:42:24
poor material, a little bit like the the the paper, because paper
00:42:28
is made from trees. So it's still the same material
00:42:33
with a completely different presentation, but still allowing
00:42:38
the work to be provisional. As she says, it's not, it's not
00:42:45
fixed it. It can be added on to.
00:42:48
There's something about drawing that's really important to her.
00:42:52
And this idea of the alter ego being a fluid entity, this idea
00:42:56
of instability is really important to her.
00:42:58
So that's, yeah, that's, that's what she and I like that she's
00:43:02
kind of at this point of like, no, like I need to give myself a
00:43:08
break as an artist. And I need to find ways to work
00:43:13
on the philosophy, work on the heritage, work on the tradition,
00:43:19
work on the ideas, work on the materials, work on the images in
00:43:23
the way that is not this kind of good girl, good student kind of
00:43:27
thing where I find shortcuts. And I'm really happy with the
00:43:31
way I'm doing things now. And I have to say, well, kudos
00:43:34
to her. Yeah.
00:43:35
All done. Absolutely.
00:43:37
So there are these images and then there are the sets.
00:43:41
How fun is that? You can, I mean, when you walk
00:43:45
in, you immediately see, you know, this wooden ramp kind of
00:43:49
leading you down and then you're on this elevated platform,
00:43:56
you're going through walkways that have been constructed and
00:44:01
there's a, you know, there's bench, there's a bench there.
00:44:04
There's like a, you know, a sink with a window.
00:44:08
And I mean it's all just wood. It's unadorned.
00:44:12
So it really gives a lot of room for the imagination.
00:44:16
And then you walk further down and there's a podium.
00:44:18
And what I loved about that is like you're both you're both
00:44:22
front, you're both on stage and backstage at the same time.
00:44:26
So you're kind of seeing the the sets from both sides.
00:44:31
As if they weren't ready yet for the film.
00:44:33
Yeah. They it's, it's virgin wood, so
00:44:36
it's not painted on. They're like sketches in some
00:44:40
ways as well. Yeah.
00:44:41
Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, absolutely.
00:44:44
And they're the same material as the wood panels.
00:44:46
So you're kind of walking on the the, the film that is making the
00:44:52
story because the wood panels are drawings, but they're also
00:44:55
the film. So they're also kind of a a film
00:44:57
that is kind of like stagnant and you're the one walking and
00:45:02
making it happen. So it's it's it's, yeah, it's
00:45:05
very clever. Very well done.
00:45:07
Yes. Yeah.
00:45:08
I thought it was really, really well done.
00:45:10
And then there's the whole atmospheric thing of the smell
00:45:12
of the wood. I mean, you know, it is.
00:45:14
Oh, true everywhere. And you can hear it creaking
00:45:19
under your feet, you know? I mean, it's like, because
00:45:22
you're obviously in a temporary space, you know?
00:45:25
Yeah, and yeah. No, I, I, I, I found it
00:45:29
irresistible. It's like the the longer I was
00:45:32
there, I could sort of allow myself to go up to the podium
00:45:38
and give my best Kamala Harris, you know, H or something, you
00:45:43
know, go to the sink and pretend to wash dishes as you're sort of
00:45:47
looking out at whatever this window is out on, whatever your
00:45:50
imagination would like to fill it in with.
00:45:54
You know, there's some, I mean, my, my stepdaughter has twins
00:46:00
and they have those little kitchen sets.
00:46:03
And I remember as a kid, like just being fascinated with
00:46:06
those. And it's like a sleigh, you
00:46:08
know, and it gives you that sort of playful permission, that
00:46:13
permission to be playful within, within the set.
00:46:18
And it's like, you know, there was almost a little bit of
00:46:21
cognitive dissonance because you're looking at the images and
00:46:25
you're like, oh, be careful. You know, you're in perilous
00:46:29
danger here. Something's gone awfully wrong.
00:46:32
I'm not totally sure what it is. But then at the same time,
00:46:35
you're like, oh, wow, let's sink.
00:46:37
Let's pretend, let's play kitchen, you know, let's play
00:46:40
house. But yeah, it's.
00:46:43
Yeah. And I just, I really liked the
00:46:46
way that the set brought you into the story in a way, and the
00:46:52
theatricalness of the story, but then it almost had its own thing
00:46:56
all together. Of cultural aspects, yeah.
00:47:01
Absolutely. You know that it's like, even if
00:47:03
the, even if the images weren't there, it's, it's, it's a, it's
00:47:08
a real presence and it it's something to, you know, that
00:47:12
welcomes you into a different mindset.
00:47:16
But yeah, it was great. Yeah, yeah.
00:47:19
It was very strange because this idea that she's working on with
00:47:24
kind of like retracting and kind of giving you the story by other
00:47:29
means works really well because, you know, sometimes less is
00:47:35
more. It's true because you, so the
00:47:38
entrance is this sort of zigzaggy passage with like a mid
00:47:44
sized wall that makes you think of airports.
00:47:48
And then you go, you zigzag into this place and you're like at
00:47:51
the airport, you're travelling somewhere.
00:47:53
So you're no longer at the curve, you're no longer at the
00:47:56
Barbican, you're somewhere else. And it was so effective.
00:48:00
Just that performative aspect of the show.
00:48:02
Each aspect of that part, like you say of that structure is the
00:48:08
airport, then you're in a waiting room, then you're in an
00:48:12
interior, you're in a home, and it ends in the court, in court.
00:48:18
But yeah, I just, I thought that that was just such an
00:48:22
unexpected, I didn't expect myself to find to be on a film
00:48:26
set and to have that sense of play and immersion, you know,
00:48:34
that added immersion into the scenes take place.
00:48:37
So that was just such a great joy of, of the exhibition
00:48:42
itself. So we've talked about some of
00:48:46
the materials, we talked about the set.
00:48:49
Now let's talk about her treatment of Bettina as a femme
00:48:53
fatale, such a, such a big archetype.
00:48:57
So I, I again did a little looking into kind of what do we
00:49:02
mean when we talk about a femme fatale?
00:49:06
And there's obviously a lot out there on, on this kind of
00:49:10
archetype, but I got the, I'm going to quote a bit from
00:49:13
screencraft.org and they talk about the femme fatale as
00:49:19
defined as the femme fatale is a character archetype you can't,
00:49:24
you simply can't take your eyes off of.
00:49:26
So think of Sharon Stone's Catherine Tramwell and Basic
00:49:29
Instinct. Like her or loathe her, the
00:49:32
femme fatale is usually the most intriguing presence on screen.
00:49:36
She's both desirable, diabolical, captivating,
00:49:41
conniving. Like the male protagonist she's
00:49:44
often paired with, you can't help but want to be with her,
00:49:48
but you don't dare double cross her.
00:49:51
So the history of the femme fatale is a complex 1.
00:49:54
She's featured in stories from many centuries, often portrayed
00:49:58
as a deceptive seductress or even a mystical priestess, and
00:50:04
typically only through the male gaze.
00:50:07
Only recently has there been a female reappropriation of the
00:50:11
femme fatale archetype in cinema.
00:50:13
Now she's not so much overly sexualized and therefore bad or
00:50:18
evil, but a passionate woman whose anger is fueled by the
00:50:22
sordid history of women being routinely dismissed and not
00:50:27
heard or respected. And I, and I thought that was
00:50:30
really interesting. I mean, 'cause you look at
00:50:32
Bettina and she is not actualising her life through the
00:50:36
male gaze. You know what I mean?
00:50:37
She. Is.
00:50:39
She is. She eventually at some point
00:50:42
seems to fall prey to it, but she's clearly not falling into
00:50:49
that category, especially visually, especially in terms of
00:50:53
the visual rendition of the character.
00:50:56
And the characterisation of this woman of Bettina is really not
00:51:01
conducive to what you've just read.
00:51:03
Yeah, she's not a young woman. I mean, the introductory scene
00:51:07
of Bettina is her walking into this kind of rural Rd.
00:51:13
She has a big coat on. She's carrying a couple of
00:51:16
suitcases. She's in sensible shoes, you
00:51:20
know, I mean. All the time.
00:51:22
Yeah, yeah. And she, she's, I guess,
00:51:28
middle-aged. I don't know.
00:51:29
It's kind of hard to age, but I'm guessing she's she doesn't
00:51:34
look like a particularly young woman.
00:51:36
She's not a scantily clad white blonde woman.
00:51:40
Yes, she's actually the opposite.
00:51:42
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
00:51:45
I saw this exit, this interview with Sundstrom at Goodman
00:51:50
Gallery. So it's a video and she talks
00:51:54
about a particular painting, I think she did painting slash
00:51:59
drawing she did for the exhibition that she that she had
00:52:05
going on there at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg, I think
00:52:07
in 2021, around that time or 2022.
00:52:12
And there's a painting there called tips.
00:52:16
And I think that starts something which is, it looks a
00:52:20
bit like, I'm going to say it in English, Polarigo's work for us
00:52:25
Portuguese, where, you know, she always uses the same kind of
00:52:29
woman. Paula Rigo worked with the
00:52:32
model, always the same model, same as Pamela Fatima Sundstrom.
00:52:37
And there's something about that painting called Tips, which
00:52:41
really made me think of Paula Rigo because the woman is
00:52:45
crouching. You can't see a chair.
00:52:47
She's in a very awkward position.
00:52:49
Her under skirts are visible. And there's, it's called tips
00:52:53
because you can see tips of knives.
00:52:55
And so there's a whole strand, thematic strand in Sundrum's
00:53:02
recent work, which is women with knives.
00:53:04
And she talks about that image and she said that she finds it.
00:53:07
She found it really strange that people talked about this image
00:53:10
as a difficult image of this image as a sort of menacing
00:53:15
image. And when you actually think
00:53:17
about it, women have been dealing with the most murderous
00:53:20
weapon, apart from obviously mechanic weapons since the dawn
00:53:24
of time because women cook. It's not a weapon.
00:53:26
It's just an everyday thing that you would use in a kitchen.
00:53:30
Why? Why is that image so menacing
00:53:34
and so femme fatale? You know, she's already working
00:53:37
in that, in distorting that archetype by saying, OK, where
00:53:43
is the fan fatale? And she quotes a scene of Pan's
00:53:48
Labyrinth, Guillermo del Toro's film, where the spy was the
00:53:54
woman in the kitchen. And she says that she loves that
00:53:57
character because it's an unsuspecting spy.
00:54:00
No one will think of her. And I've heard, I don't know if
00:54:04
this is a myth or not, but someone told me a few years back
00:54:08
that the MI 5 was looking for female for middle-aged women as
00:54:14
new recruits because they would be the people that that nobody
00:54:20
would suspect would be spies. Boy, I don't know.
00:54:26
Is that insulting or is that a compliment?
00:54:30
I don't know. I think it's both.
00:54:34
It's probably both, is what she's trying to tell us.
00:54:36
And she's, you know, this is a, this is a woman who's obviously
00:54:39
holding a knife in a few of the images.
00:54:42
I mean, a couple I can think of in particular.
00:54:47
And there's a dead person in one of the images.
00:54:49
And you think that she is obviously been involved in a
00:54:54
murder in some way. In one scene you see her.
00:54:58
You know, there's lots of the kind of tropes of the the film
00:55:01
noir, you know, which involves headlights in the rain and
00:55:06
suspicious glances. And in some of them, it's hard
00:55:10
to piece exactly what's going on, piece together exactly
00:55:13
what's going on. But in one scene you see her
00:55:17
organizing a defense, I think, with another woman, which I
00:55:21
really liked. It's like, you know, two women
00:55:24
and they're dressed in more masculine clothes, but they're
00:55:27
in an office filled with books. And you can tell they're kind of
00:55:31
plotting out what the what the defense is going to be.
00:55:36
Because I mean, in the next scene, or very nearly the next
00:55:39
scene anyway, you see the, the courtroom and the, the, the
00:55:42
jury, which is mostly men that are kind of looking on to the
00:55:45
scene of, of what's going on. And but one that I loved so
00:55:51
much, one of the scenes is you see her in bed with a lover and
00:55:58
you would imagine post coitus and she has her cigarette and
00:56:03
she she holds it over his mouth so that he can have a drag.
00:56:09
Uh huh. Uh huh.
00:56:11
And there was just something so possessive about that that, you
00:56:17
know, that I loved so much. I mean, she's kind of curled up
00:56:22
next to him in sort of a more typical kind of, you know, way,
00:56:28
you know, he's not curled up in her arm.
00:56:30
There's a lyric in a Beyoncé song in formation where she says
00:56:36
when he fucked me good, I take his ass to Red Lobster and it's
00:56:40
like, it kind of reminded me of that.
00:56:43
It's like she's like, oh, here, sweetie, go ahead and have a
00:56:46
little yellow drag of my cigarette kind of thing.
00:56:50
But yeah, it's. She holds the power.
00:56:53
She's holding the power, yeah. I mean, she's like through.
00:56:56
She's holding the pleasure. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
00:57:00
And you, you get that sense throughout that she's there's so
00:57:04
much agency, you know, I mean, you know, if you look again, the
00:57:10
name Bettina, my oath is to God. It's like there's she's she has
00:57:15
a compass, she has autonomy. She is, you know, making
00:57:19
decisions in this really terrible situation that she's
00:57:23
gotten herself in. And in the end, that beautiful
00:57:28
bridge picture, I assume it's Bettina walking in the bridge.
00:57:32
But is it a lover? Is she meeting a lover?
00:57:35
I couldn't quite tell. Or was it this friend?
00:57:39
I mean 'cause she has this friend.
00:57:41
Yeah, who is herself? Yeah, yeah, A.
00:57:45
Little bit like in the substance.
00:57:46
That she's new to this town and she's it's a rural town and
00:57:50
she's trying to kind of figure out the, you know, the way of
00:57:55
life there and she obviously makes some faux pas, you know,
00:58:00
and it and has upset people and it has generated all of this
00:58:07
suspicion. I mean, maybe some guy made a
00:58:10
pass at her and she. Denounced him.
00:58:15
Denounced him or, you know, humiliated him in some way,
00:58:19
maybe publicly, you know, they have become, he has then become
00:58:23
a threat to her. She has to defend herself.
00:58:27
I mean, that's one way. That's so interesting.
00:58:30
What came to mind for you? I had a completely different
00:58:35
expectation for this exhibition, so I I have to say I was a bit
00:58:40
taken aback. Maybe taken aback is too strong
00:58:42
of an expression, but I was a bit surprised to see that there
00:58:48
were no lead images, which I think is one of her strong suits
00:58:53
is one that's the strong aspects of her work and I love this
00:58:58
thing that she does, which is figure and landscape a little
00:59:02
bit like the Mona Lisa, you know figure huge landscape behind and
00:59:07
I love that and that gives me a feeling of childhood longing and
00:59:15
adults projection. You know, there's something
00:59:17
about it and the curiosity because in back back in previous
00:59:23
experiences of her work, I didn't understand her images.
00:59:27
And I love that she's one of those artists where I'm really
00:59:30
fascinated. And so I get to the exhibition
00:59:34
and I see things that really do not interest me, like art
00:59:38
emulating cinema. Sick of it, but the fan fatale
00:59:42
cannot handle it anymore. Does not interest me in any way
00:59:47
shape or form. So I get go into it and I'm
00:59:51
like, oh, this is this is the theme.
00:59:55
This is what we're working with. She grabs me immediately.
00:59:59
I'm completely in it. Love it, love the drawings, love
01:00:03
the the the the set, love everything about it.
01:00:06
But yeah, that's interesting what you were saying about the
01:00:09
the layering and that being such an intrinsic aspect to what her
01:00:14
previous work was about. And looking at that through this
01:00:18
lens, you know, that it is layering scenes on top of one
01:00:23
another in a way, but also obviously, the layering over the
01:00:27
natural grain of the wood, I guess was in there as well.
01:00:32
But yeah, having not been, you know, aware of her previous
01:00:35
work. Yeah, that's, that's
01:00:38
fascinating. I mean, I think, you know, in
01:00:40
terms of plot, I don't think she invites you to consider what's
01:00:44
happening. Oh.
01:00:46
You don't think? I well, I, I mean, because I
01:00:48
didn't feel that either. I mean, I, I actually thought
01:00:50
that was a notable thing, you know, I mean, a film generally
01:00:54
has a plot and you're coming into a film space.
01:00:58
Yes. And there's obviously you're
01:01:01
seeing some plot points, but without the, you know, bits in
01:01:06
between, so you don't really have the context for it.
01:01:08
Exactly. But what I, what I felt while I
01:01:13
was there was the emotion of it rather than the thought of it,
01:01:18
you know, was the precariousness of her situation and the
01:01:23
consequentialness of her situation.
01:01:26
I mean, her life is going to change no matter what.
01:01:29
It has changed in the scenes that you've seen.
01:01:32
But I think you're right. I think you're right.
01:01:34
I think she doesn't want you. Yeah, you're absolutely right.
01:01:39
She doesn't want you to create a very specific plot in those
01:01:45
images. Yeah, because it's about who is
01:01:48
this person that is playing something like a femme fatale
01:01:53
role in a very different context and in a very approached very,
01:01:57
very differently. And how does that make you feel?
01:02:01
Because if she were a gorgeous blonde, you know, siren, sort of
01:02:09
femme fatale, I would feel a lot differently about all of these
01:02:13
images, you know, But she's, she's creating a different sort
01:02:18
of feeling because of the person that she's included in there.
01:02:21
And only Sundstrom knows what she was going for there.
01:02:24
But I, I, I, I didn't feel necessarily like that was the
01:02:31
intention was for me to fill in the plot points.
01:02:35
Yeah, you're the camera and you're the projection projecting
01:02:40
entity, but in a psychological way.
01:02:43
Totally. And The thing is there's, there
01:02:46
aren't many men. If you think about it, the men
01:02:49
are kind of like sketchy in the not, not sketchy in like dodgy,
01:02:55
but sketched into the certain scenes.
01:02:59
But it's mostly, I mean, men are very, very present at the end in
01:03:04
the court scene, in the court space.
01:03:07
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, that's true.
01:03:09
But it's very female driven. Like there's a there's a plot
01:03:13
hole there where you don't quite and that's to to corroborate
01:03:17
where you were saying we don't quite there's a dead male, but
01:03:21
then that's it. I mean that there's a death and
01:03:25
that's what she wanted to, to work with, but she's not
01:03:29
characterizing, but also because she works with her own figure
01:03:33
and her own body, so, and her own image.
01:03:36
So of course I, I wonder how technically that works.
01:03:40
I would like to ask her that question.
01:03:41
If you work with yourself, then when you're doing male bodies,
01:03:44
what do you do? Is it still you and is it the
01:03:48
reason why they're they aren't as present?
01:03:51
Because at the end there's a lot of images, probably in the same
01:03:54
way as she did before, like looking up images of people to
01:03:57
the femme fatale. There's always the the sort of
01:04:01
victim of the femme fatale, which is the male protagonists.
01:04:06
They're usually a protagonist, right?
01:04:08
The male victims of the femme fatale, but they're absent here
01:04:13
almost, and they're murdered, so it's like we're in.
01:04:17
Bed getting a drag off of. Her oh right or smoking or being
01:04:21
overpowered by by the fan fatale.
01:04:24
Maybe it's like as if the worst nightmare of the fan fatale came
01:04:28
true and she actually crushed the male protagonist.
01:04:32
It might be that. I mean, there's so many ways of
01:04:36
reading. She's talking to people who know
01:04:38
what this genre is and who can play with it.
01:04:43
I think in in some ways. Yeah, totally.
01:04:46
Yeah. Cool.
01:04:47
I love that you got over that hurdle of like a bit of, I don't
01:04:52
know, film stuff and Fatale. I'm not sure this theme is
01:04:55
jiving with me, but that she took you in through a pathway
01:04:59
that made you go, oh, actually, as you know, I'm feeling this.
01:05:04
You know, that's a nice feeling to get over.
01:05:07
Some of, you know your own preconceived notions of things.
01:05:12
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's like the substance
01:05:15
if you, I, I read about it and I was like, everyone's saying this
01:05:18
is great, but it's not the kind of thing that really attracts me
01:05:21
and I'm a bit sick of it. You know, the female, this
01:05:26
empowerment. And yeah.
01:05:28
And then you go and you're like, OK, you found a new way to tell
01:05:32
an old story. That's good.
01:05:34
Yeah. I mean, I'm still not super into
01:05:38
the imagery because so that's something we didn't talk about,
01:05:41
which is the fact that she's been exploring history and she's
01:05:49
now mid century and she's fascinated with that era because
01:05:53
she explains that it's a moment important in the African
01:05:56
continent where you were completely contaminated since
01:06:00
Victorian times by an aesthetic. And her women before were kind
01:06:04
of Victorian clothed. And now she's drawing into the
01:06:10
20th century, mid century at a time where there's a lot of
01:06:14
European and Western aesthetics and furnishings and houses and
01:06:19
clothing and even behaviour. But at the same time, there's a
01:06:24
African context and there's clearly the beginnings of
01:06:31
revolution coming like this, this first rumours and, and, and
01:06:40
starting points of, you know, independence, consciousness and
01:06:46
desire. And she's really interested in
01:06:49
that moment because that's the moment where things get complex
01:06:52
because there is this overlapping of ways of living
01:06:57
and at the same time this very specific needs of cutting ties
01:07:01
with that power that came from Europe and and other places.
01:07:06
And so the aesthetic is that the aesthetic of that time.
01:07:12
And I don't know why I kind of wonder, I've been wondering ever
01:07:15
since I went to the exhibition, why am I so sick of it?
01:07:19
Why am I so sick of that? And the bit surprised that
01:07:22
someone who has the research power that she has to go into
01:07:29
something that for me is a bit of a tire trope.
01:07:32
And why do I think it's a tire trope?
01:07:34
I don't know. Yeah.
01:07:36
I mean, it's been done a lot. So I guess that's, you know, and
01:07:41
we've seen it all in a certain way a lot of times.
01:07:44
And I guess maybe that's the reason why she wanted to revisit
01:07:47
it. You know, it has been done a ton
01:07:51
and it's always been done or very often been done in a
01:07:55
certain way. And she's like, you know, we
01:07:57
could. There is another spin to this.
01:07:59
There's an aspect of this that has not been explored.
01:08:03
And I think it's 19 scenes, right?
01:08:06
Like it's a night, you know, it's if you have an idea, a
01:08:10
theme that is somewhat familiar, you know, in a short space of
01:08:15
time, maybe that's a way to bring people into something more
01:08:22
easily. I don't know.
01:08:23
That might not hold up because. No, I'm.
01:08:25
Just thinking of like, you know, the TWAIN thing of like, I
01:08:28
didn't have enough time to write a short letter.
01:08:31
It's like, you know, I mean in a way that could make it more
01:08:34
difficult, you know, to encapsulate that.
01:08:37
I could work in a way, quite frankly, that logic, but.
01:08:40
There's been a few films that's that that came about, one of
01:08:44
them being this horrendous film with two amazing actresses, Anne
01:08:50
Hathaway and Jessica Chastain. I just watched that mother's
01:08:55
instinct. Mother's instinct, Exactly.
01:08:58
Yeah. And then I rewatched the hours
01:09:01
as well recently. You're on the same clock.
01:09:06
I just watched the I just rewatched.
01:09:07
Are you joking? As well.
01:09:09
No, I have. Emily.
01:09:10
We were meant to be Emily. That's.
01:09:13
Totally. That's so funny.
01:09:16
And I have I had a really visceral reaction to these.
01:09:20
Everyone was dressed alike in mother's instinct.
01:09:23
The best thing you could get was a a Pearl necklace that was the
01:09:28
highlight of your life to get the same Pearl necklace that
01:09:32
every woman had. I mean, come on, for Christ's
01:09:36
sakes, the 50s were not that neat.
01:09:37
It really is this projecting onto the past of of of a time
01:09:42
that ever was. She is breaking that for sure.
01:09:47
Like the I haven't watched that film yet the the black western
01:09:54
that what's his name Jordan Peele directed.
01:09:58
I haven't. Seen it now.
01:09:59
I haven't watched that yet, but I loved Get Out and I loved the
01:10:04
other one about doppelgangers, which is kind of like shifting
01:10:08
perspectives in ways that are unexpected and kind of breaks
01:10:12
that neatness that we are trying to hold on to too much in film
01:10:18
in some ways. So she's probably doing that
01:10:22
very knowingly. So knowing she's talking to a
01:10:26
certain audience that has a certain education, film
01:10:28
education and and that perhaps, you know, they're going to very
01:10:33
quickly piece that up, you know, and the education that she has
01:10:37
too with that we share. She talks a lot about Hitchcock
01:10:41
and about how a little bit like her.
01:10:45
Apparently it took him like a bunch of days to decide on the
01:10:50
grey suit for Kim Novak in Vertigo, you know, and she's
01:10:55
she's drawn to that. She's also in love, I think,
01:10:58
with that that storytelling way of that time, which was so nice,
01:11:03
which was elliptical, contrary to the substance, which is too
01:11:08
much, which is filling in the narrative with more and more
01:11:13
details. And she's, I think she's drawn
01:11:16
to that way of storytelling, which was about not
01:11:21
illustrating, not showing, but hinting at.
01:11:24
And all the images that you see in the exhibition are images
01:11:27
between the event that you don't see.
01:11:31
It was like sex in those times. Like, they were going to the
01:11:35
room, they kissed, and scene was the morning after.
01:11:40
Like, he would not show the sex scene and the murders.
01:11:44
Also in Hitchcock, you don't see really the gruesome side of
01:11:48
murder. There's hardly any bloods.
01:11:51
So yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you're right.
01:11:53
I think that's it. I think she knows exactly that
01:11:56
we will piece together, you know, what she's talking about
01:11:59
very quickly. And at the same time, she's kind
01:12:02
of like completely breaking that mold.
01:12:04
Thank you everyone for listening and thanks, Joanna.
01:12:07
This is great. I mean, it was so nice to hear
01:12:09
more about Sundstrom's work and how it contributed and
01:12:16
influenced this really incredible exhibition that she's
01:12:20
put together for the Barbican and just so fulsome and
01:12:25
participatory, which was a really nice surprise.
01:12:29
So thank you. Well, thank you Emily.
01:12:32
This as usual was a pleasure and you made me understand things
01:12:37
that I didn't quite get coming into the episode, so that was
01:12:40
really fantastic. As usual, thanks for hanging in
01:12:43
with us. I hope you enjoyed this episode
01:12:46
and we will be in your presence very, very soon.
01:12:50
Take care. See you.
01:12:51
Soon, bye.