Our two Exhibitionistas friends, art writer and curator Joana P. R. Neves and dedicated exhibition goer Emily Harding, visit The Curve at The Barbican to see the first institutional exhibition of Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum's work in the UK, titled “It Will End in Tears”. How does the combination of film noir with its femme fatale characters resonate with Phatsimo’s mixed race characters? What influence does the naked “film set” structure have in our perception of the drawings, embedded in it? Can the visitor’s movement in the space activate static images? And what strange power do the women have, or not, in the story we piece together?
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Like a film and a film set, Phatsimo’s installation creates an immersive environment. Too much? Emily and Joana’s exhibition walkthrough reveals themes of contained rage, love, jealousy and independence, with dedicated areas suggesting different settings or interiors. How effective is this recomposed but always truncated narrative?
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Joana and Emily also provide art student resources via a small introduction of the contemporary artist they focus on along with art banter, meditative explorations, and, often, feminist perspectives, with an attentiveness to issues of racism and eurocentric biases–they try to shift their perspective and are happy for you to extend your knowledge in the comments.
Expect: a colourful artist biography; art history musings; art theory and art language dissected or used in accessible ways; art wonderment in buckets; international art; thoughts on curatorial work; and art etiquette challenges…
To know more about the show: https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2024/event/pamela-phatsimo-sunstrum-it-will-end-in-tears
To follow Sunstrum on Instagram: @pamelaphatsimo
Music by Sarturn.
Did the episode stir Art Wonderment memories? Share them via text or voice message.
Created & Hosted by Dr. Joana P. R. Neves, art curator and writer with over 20 years of experience in the contemporary art field. Artistic director of Drawing Now Paris since 2018, she has worked across the industry, from the art market to education. She co-launched the art residency and project space Worlding in 2020. Exhibitionistas’ first year offered exhibition discussions with guest co-host Emily Harding; organically, it grew into a more experimental show exploring art topics, stories and interviews complemented by Joana’s publication Art Thinkosaurus on Substack. She champions ‘Art Wonderment’s’ embrace of complexity against the lure of ready-made opinions. A polyglot, she grew up in Lisbon, studied and lived in Paris, to finally settle in London with her artist husband, four children and two cats.
Find us:
On Instagram – @exhibitionistas_podcast
On Substack (NEWSLETTER: sign up!): Art Thinkosaurus > Exhibitionistas Files
Online: www.exhibitionistaspodcast.com
Do you want to be a guest on Art Etiquette? Reach out: joana@exhibitionistaspodcast.com
Copyright: Joana P. R. Neves, 2024.
00:00:09
Hello exhibitionistas, I hope you're doing very, very well.
00:00:13
This is the time where we start blowing our noses, clearing our
00:00:19
sinuses before recording. And believe me, Emily and I did
00:00:23
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.
00:01:03
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
00:01:08
Patreon is, it is simply a platform that allows creatives
00:01:13
to get paid for their work according to your financial
00:01:17
possibilities. So if you can't put in any
00:01:21
financial aid in it, other people will.
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And that allows us to bring add free, bonus free seasons to you
00:01:31
and to everyone. So this allows us to have
00:01:34
accessible content to all supported by a few or many,
00:01:39
hopefully. So our Patreon page is on the
00:01:43
show's notes. You can click on the link and it
00:01:45
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
00:01:53
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
00:02:45
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
00:03:01
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
00:03:23
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
00:03:37
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.
00:07:39
So yeah, go check it out. Ghost route.
00:07:41
So good. So, Joanna, do you want to
00:07:44
introduce us to the artist this week, Pamela Fatima Sundstrom?
00:07:48
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
00:08:10
North Carolina at Chapel Hill in International Studies with a
00:08:14
concentration in Transnational Cultures in 2004.
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She received her MFA from the Mount Mount Royal School of Art
00:08:23
at the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2007.
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She now lives in the Netherlands after a sort of peripatetic
00:08:32
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
00:08:37
Netherlands or not, but that's where she's living now.
00:08:41
So she attributes her passion for research to this academic
00:08:45
background, which which translates differently.
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As I was saying, between the beginning of her career and now,
00:08:53
I would say since 20/17/18, her work changed a little bit, which
00:08:59
is absolutely normal. She's been working for a while
00:09:02
now. This shift in her iconography is
00:09:04
hinged on the way drawing is taking shape and we can say that
00:09:08
this literacy is there in the process as well.
00:09:11
And the outcome of her work, she developed an alter ego as well,
00:09:15
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.
00:09:25
So that's something that you see a lot in her drawings since the
00:09:30
beginning, which is that there's the figure, the presence of a
00:09:34
human figure, and it's very often the same person all the
00:09:38
time. And she actually actually uses
00:09:40
her own body and her own image to do so.
00:09:43
Yeah, she that's a theme in this show too.
00:09:45
Definitely. And absolutely, that's a theme
00:09:48
in this show. So this research and this
00:09:52
interest she's had on many, many things takes us to an aspect of
00:09:57
her work, which is that up until recently, the works would were
00:10:01
layered as if each element in it was at least translucent or, and
00:10:08
contained other images or revealed images behind at
00:10:12
different scales. So she started by placing human
00:10:16
figures in a sort of constellated image with grids,
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charts, elements of nature and people doing something.
00:10:24
And this was done laboriously, painstakingly, with a very,
00:10:29
very, and I cannot stress this enough, very refined drawing
00:10:33
technique that gave all these layers a sense of unity.
00:10:37
So drawing kind of brought all of these things together, but
00:10:40
also broke them apart. And it was very almost sci-fi
00:10:46
kind of images and the works from this period.
00:10:50
So up until I would say 2017, eighteen were mostly blue.
00:10:56
So for her, this was kind of an outer space blue because she was
00:11:00
focused on trying to learn about geography, geology, physics, and
00:11:04
all kinds of subjects that would cater to this dimension of the
00:11:08
individual versus the universe. And perhaps not the universal, I
00:11:12
would think, because very literally the universe and the
00:11:16
grand scheme of all things and what we're made of.
00:11:20
She was looking into physics a lot, like really the discipline
00:11:24
of physics was the main concern for her.
00:11:28
So like I was saying, a couple of years before the pandemic,
00:11:31
this very specific perspective was a tiny bit dislocated, not
00:11:36
only from drawing to painting, which is still, she still sees
00:11:40
as drawing, but on a more resistant surface.
00:11:43
And we'll get to that, but also from the blue palette to a more
00:11:47
earthy set of colours. Which brings us to this
00:11:51
exhibition. She was interested in making her
00:11:54
work seductive, which I think it is, but in a sort of intelligent
00:11:59
way, right? Feels more cerebral.
00:12:03
Seductive in a cerebral sort of way, yeah.
00:12:06
That's exactly. I was trying to look for an
00:12:08
expression and I think that's exactly it.
00:12:10
Yeah. You were taken by the hand into
00:12:15
rather crazy stories like in this exhibition, as if you were
00:12:19
listening to a story told by the silky voice of Vanessa Redgrave,
00:12:24
right? Yeah, totally.
00:12:27
You're kind of basking in that vibration, but also realizing
00:12:31
that this seductive storytelling also allows you to be taken into
00:12:36
very dangerous territories. So one of the things that's
00:12:40
really uncanny is that there's a focus on the human figure, but
00:12:44
usually but not always a non white character that is
00:12:50
corresponds to this work on the alter ego and on this on the
00:12:53
when you see her, you see that the figure, the human figures
00:12:58
that you see playing different roles look like the artist
00:13:02
herself. So they look like her, but she's
00:13:04
calling them something different.
00:13:06
Yes, yes. Well, in the beginning she had
00:13:09
Asmi, who was the alter ego, and now she's very clearly building
00:13:15
narratives and making up characters also based on family.
00:13:21
She started digging into family history, family photographs.
00:13:25
So she went from looking at anatomy books, looking at
00:13:30
National Geographic images, early images of African people
00:13:36
and indigenous people. And so she was in that kind of
00:13:42
territory of science or a sort of pseudo academic territory.
00:13:46
And now she's more into a a sort of personal constellation of
00:13:50
stories that she doesn't put out there as being personal, but she
00:13:54
her archival research kind of changed and became more
00:13:58
personal. But having settled her work is
00:14:00
not hyperrealism. So for those who can't go to the
00:14:03
show or haven't seen her work before, she built a way to
00:14:07
produce recognizable imagery that pays homage to the history
00:14:12
of drawing, where the characters are always drawn and therefore
00:14:16
artificial or fictional. So you have a sense that she's
00:14:19
not trying to portray herself as she is.
00:14:22
She's not digging into her own image.
00:14:24
She's using her image to tell a story, almost like a cartoon in
00:14:29
some ways, although it's not cartoony as as it were.
00:14:33
Oh, the reason why she uses her own body is interesting because
00:14:36
she says in an interview that she doesn't condemn, you know,
00:14:41
people using other bodies and other images.
00:14:44
But for her, she was kind of looking into the history she's
00:14:48
very aware of, and we'll talk about that, of colonialism, post
00:14:53
colonialism times, especially having lived in South Africa.
00:14:56
And she says that being a, a woman of colour and realizing
00:15:02
how in art history other bodies were othered, you know, other
00:15:07
bodies were othered and especially women were treated
00:15:10
like images of desire, but also images of enslavement.
00:15:16
She didn't want to use other people's bodies and she uses her
00:15:19
own because she can use and abuse it, because it's her body
00:15:22
and she can do whatever she wants with it.
00:15:24
Interesting. Yeah, that's interesting.
00:15:26
Yeah. It's interesting that that gave
00:15:28
her more freedom rather than less freedom, you know, because
00:15:32
I think there's so many artists and people that would be like,
00:15:35
well, yeah, I can imagine this scenario, but boy, putting me
00:15:38
in, it's a bit too hot to the touch, you know?
00:15:41
But yeah, it's interesting that she had sort of the opposite
00:15:44
stance on that. And that's how the background of
00:15:48
an artist is interesting. I don't know much about her.
00:15:51
She's around 44 years old or something, so there isn't a lot
00:15:55
of things out there about her, but there's quite a few
00:15:57
interviews if you know our listeners are interested.
00:16:00
There's really like a bunch of interviews on YouTube and online
00:16:05
that really interesting. But she does mention at some
00:16:08
point that she worked as an actress and a dancer.
00:16:10
She's used to using her own body, so it's interesting to see
00:16:13
that for her. It's not a constraint.
00:16:15
Like you say, it's freeing, but it wouldn't be for someone else.
00:16:19
Yeah, but I think it also makes for that cerebral intelligence
00:16:23
that she has as well, right, That atmosphere.
00:16:26
And it also creates this idea of the alter ego, the doppelganger,
00:16:30
the double, and having spoken about the substance that works.
00:16:34
Yeah, I was just thinking that. Yeah, totally.
00:16:37
And it's like, you know, you wonder how she negotiated her
00:16:40
own, her own internal dialogue about what she should or
00:16:45
shouldn't look like in these images.
00:16:48
You know, I mean, it's got to be in there somewhere, right?
00:16:50
I mean, she is not immune to societal pressure and she is,
00:16:55
you know, living in a place and is of a place and.
00:16:58
And all of that would inform whether or not she's playing
00:17:02
with an alter ego, if it's her own image, how much she can
00:17:06
really dissect and pull apart from those beliefs she might
00:17:12
have about who she is and what looking this way might mean as
00:17:16
opposed to looking that way. I saw her many minutes ago doing
00:17:21
an A talk in her gallery, Tiwani Gallery at the time.
00:17:26
Which was Tiwani Gallery. We love Tiwani Gallery.
00:17:29
They have amazing artists. And I remember looking at her
00:17:34
and then looking at the works and thinking, oh, you know,
00:17:36
because you kind of start connecting the dots.
00:17:39
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
00:17:48
is kind of racially ambiguous because I thought it was an
00:17:52
Asian character more like in terms of facial traits.
00:17:57
And I love that one of her shows when she at Goodman Gallery in
00:18:01
Johannesburg recently was called You'll be sorry.
00:18:04
And she says it's about the people who leave, who go away
00:18:09
are told you'll be sorry for leaving, You'll come back,
00:18:13
You'll be sorry for wanting to be an artist.
00:18:15
You'll go back to a proper work. And you know, and she's, she has
00:18:19
this consciousness of how movement and displacement
00:18:24
affects your identity, you know, and, and, and it's much more
00:18:28
than appearances that she's interested in.
00:18:30
She's interested in the culture and in the the nuances of what
00:18:36
you inherit wherever you are in the world and from what's
00:18:40
starting point you enter your life in or from and then where
00:18:46
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,
00:18:58
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
00:19:13
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.
00:20:19
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.