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Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum
183 Plays22 days ago
We go back to The Curve at the Barbican for the first institutional exhibition of Pamela Phatsimo’s work in the UK, titled It Will End in Tears.
And what an entrance Sunstrum’s work is having in London! The exhibition adapts to the demanding shape of The Curve, basically a curved corridor initially designed as a buffer between the auditoriums and the hall, and now a creative exhibition space that Joana and Emily have come to love.
Sunstrum involves the viewer in a revised film noir narrative, where the “femme” is perhaps even more “fatale” than usual.
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
Support us on our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/c/ExhibitionistasPodcast
Follow the pod, subscribe, and review us!
Follow us on Instagram: @exhibitionistas_podcast
Music by @Saturn
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Transcript
Introduction and Sinus Humor
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello is it the Shinisters? I hope you're doing very very well. This is the time where we start blowing our noses, clearing our sinuses before recording and believe me Emily and I did just that.
00:00:25
Speaker
before recording this episode. um
Pamela Futsimo Sundstrom's Exhibition Overview
00:00:28
Speaker
We're very excited. I am very excited to introduce you to an episode that is dedicated to Pamela Futsimo Sundstrom's exhibition at the Barbican titled, This Will End in Tears. And I'm particularly excited because I have been following her work for a while and I love it. I'm really interested in seeing how an artist's work develops and I think it's been about a decade now that I've been looking at her work so this was a particularly exciting and insightful episode for me.
Patreon and Podcast Format
00:01:03
Speaker
Another thing that I would like to remind you is that we have a Patreon page and if you don't know what Patreon is, it is simply a platform that allows creatives to get
00:01:14
Speaker
paid for their work according to your financial possibilities. So if you can't put in any financial aid in it, other people will. And that allows us to bring ad-free, bonus-free seasons to you and to everyone. So this allows us to have accessible content to all, supported by a few or many, hopefully.
00:01:40
Speaker
So our Patreon page is on the show's notes. You can click on the link and it will take you there. It might be somewhat of a novelty for you, a new space. I do leave my exhibition notes in there, so if you become a member, you will get them in your email box, so that's nice. If you'd like to read some thoughts that stem from the episode but don't really belong in there and but that could be interesting and kind of open up other doors for thinking about exhibitions artists and art in general so without further ado let's do this it's gonna be a good one take care
00:02:36
Speaker
I am Joanna Pieronevos, writer and curator and artistic director of Drawing Now Art Fair. And this is the podcast where we research your favourite, or about to turn so, artists after visiting their exhibitions separately.
Art Scene in London and Personal Stories
00:02:53
Speaker
Then we get together in our makeshift little recording studios and exchange views, experiences, impatient to talk to each other and to share our views with you.
00:03:04
Speaker
One of us researches the artist more deeply, and this time, it's my turn to introduce you to the art of Pamela Fazemo Sunstrom, whose exhibition, This Will End in Tears, is open at the Barbican Curve Space until the 5th of January. Hello, I'm Emily Harding, an art lover and an exhibition goer, and I'm really looking forward to discussing Pamela Fazemo Sunstrom's theatrical, playful, dark exhibition.
00:03:34
Speaker
um But before we do so, Joanna, you had a big week in culture. How was it? London has been abuzz with art because it's freeze week. So it's a rather intense moment in the art world that I try to dip my toes in, but not drown in.
00:03:49
Speaker
being the introvert that I am. I think there's a whole episode to do about being an introvert and working in the art world or doing events at a think tank. There's a lot to say about that. But um one of the very nice things, and there's very nice things about this week, is that you have the sculpture park around the famous tent of the art fair.
00:04:13
Speaker
So that was fun. I'm still waiting for an artist to make a sculpture for the squirrels because they get really excited with the sculptures. Yeah, that would be nice. I mean, what are we waiting for seems is all I'm asking. Seems like a new trainer. Let's just say it was called here first. you know Exactly. Joanna Nieves. Yeah. Exactly. I mean, honestly, who's your audience? like Think about that. During this whole crazy week, it was so funny because the week started with one of our sons telling us to watch couples therapy on BBC, which, you know, what
Perspectives on Film and Books
00:04:47
Speaker
was that about? Yeah. Which we did, by the way, ah with them. It was really interesting. And then um I took Diogo to watch Corali Farja's The Substance.
00:05:00
Speaker
And I was ah blown away by it. Yeah, I thought it was incredible. Demi Moore is so great. I mean, you think it was a great movie. I mean, really gory. you know i mean it was It's not for everyone because we've had some mixed um reactions amongst the people we know and hear in our house and it's body horror. I have seldom been in a theater where I feel the film physically. The last time I felt that, and it was at home, mind you, but I can only imagine how it is in the theater, it was with Clockwork Orange and Freaks. This film is kind of a mix between Freaks and the Clockwork Orange kind of put together for me. It's a really unusual movie, you know, even as someone who enjoys a bit of horror. This is, again, something very different. Oh, this is beyond.
00:05:54
Speaker
But I mean, for me, I, you know, I haven't been out for checking out Freeze at all, and it's related, you know, hu a hub-a-bleu around it. So I'll live vicariously through you and through Instagram as well, which is full of lots of Freeze stuff. But I did pick up a brilliant book of short stories called Ghost Roots. I don't know if you've heard anything about this. It's by an author called Penny Agunda.
00:06:19
Speaker
And it's her first book, which is annoying because it's just really, really good like to be out of the gate. She's one of those. no good yeah And it's won a bunch of accolades. And it's a final it's a finalist for the 2024 National Book Awards, shortlisted for the Kane Prize for African Writing. Wow. And I'm just a couple of stories in, but it's so, you know, when you read something and you're like, oh, I just never really felt this world before. I've never really felt, you know, this kind of storytelling before. it So I'm only a couple of stories in so I can't articulate it, but I'm enjoying it so much. So she's Agunda's Nigerian writer. And we've done a bunch of work on Nigeria, you know, at work on a geopolitical sense. And there's this Michael Palin documentary that I watched earlier this year. Oh,
00:07:11
Speaker
which was great. We actually had him come to the stage at work as well and talk about this with one of his British Nigerian producers who worked on the who worked on the film. And so it was you know so I've kind of had Yeah, an introduction into Nigeria in that sense. But this is like a very different doorway in than it. Yeah, it feels really exciting. So yeah, go check it out.
Deep Dive into Sundstrom's Art Themes
00:07:41
Speaker
Ghost Roots. So good. So Joanna, do you want to introduce us to the artist this week, Pamela Fetsima Sundstrom? Absolutely. So this time we're looking at an artist born in 1980 in Mathieu de Botswana, who then went on to live in different parts of Africa.
00:07:59
Speaker
in Southeast Asia. So Pamela Fazimo Sunstrom moved to the US in 1998 and received the BA with highest honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in international studies with a concentration in transnational cultures in 2004. She received her MFA from the Mount mount Royal School of Art at the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2007. She now lives in the Netherlands after a sort of peripatetic life, which probably will still be so. We don't know if she's going to stay in the like in the Netherlands or not, ah but that's where she's living now. So she attributes her passion for research to this academic background, wi which translates differently, as I was saying, um between the beginning of of her career and now, I would say since
00:08:55
Speaker
2017-18, her work changed a little bit, which is absolutely normal. She's been working for a while now. This shift in her iconography is hinged on the way drawing is taking shape. And we can say that this literacy is there in the process as well and the outcome of her work. She developed an alter ego as well called ASME, which is a way to grasp constant unfolding of her identity and identities in general, I guess. So that's something that you see a lot in her drawings since the beginning, which is that there is the figure, the presence of a human figure, and it's very often the same person all the time. And she actually actually uses her own body and her own image ah to do so. Yeah, that's a theme in the show too, definitely.
00:09:46
Speaker
And absolutely, that's the theme in this show. So this research and this interest she's had on many, many things takes us to an aspect of her work, which is that up until recently, the works would were layered as if each element in it was at least translucent or and contained other images or revealed images behind at different scales. So she started by placing human figures in a sort of constellated image with grids, charts, elements of nature, and people doing something. And this was done laboriously, painstakingly, with a very, very, and I cannot stress this enough, very refined drawing technique.
00:10:34
Speaker
that gave all these layers a sense of unity so drawing kind of brought all of these things together but also broke them apart and it was very almost sci-fi kind of images um and the works from this period so up until I would say 2017-18 were mostly blue so for her this was kind of an outer space blue because she was focused on trying to learn about geography geology physics and all kinds of subjects that would cater to this dimension of the individual
00:11:09
Speaker
versus the universe, and perhaps not the universal, I would think, because very literally, the universe and the grand scheme of all things, and what we're made of, um she was looking into physics a lot, like really the discipline of physics was the main concern for her. So like I was saying, a couple of years before the pandemic, this very specific perspective was a tiny bit dislocated, not only from drawing to painting,
00:11:39
Speaker
which is still she still sees as drawing but on a more resistant surface, and we'll get to that. But also from the blue palette to a more earthy set of colors, which brings us to this exhibition.
Sundstrom's Artistic Techniques and Evolution
00:11:52
Speaker
She was interested in making her work seductive, which I think it is, but in a sort of intelligent way. yeah right feels more cerebral seductive in a cerebral sort of way yeah that's exactly i was trying to look for an expression and i think that's exactly it yeah um you were taken by the hand into uh rather crazy stories like in this exhibition as if you were listening to a story told by the silky voice of anessa redgrave right yeah totally
00:12:27
Speaker
You are kind of basking in that vibration, but also realizing that this seductive storytelling also allows you to be taken into very dangerous territories. um So one of the things that's really uncanny is that there's a focus on the human figure, but you usually, but not always, a non-white character that is corresponds to this work on the alter ego. And on this on when you see her, you see that the figure, the human figures that you see playing different roles look like the artist herself. So they look like her, but she's calling them something different.
00:13:06
Speaker
Yes, ah yes. Well, in the beginning, she had Asmi, who was the alter ego. And now she's very clearly building narratives and making up characters. Also based on family, she started digging into family history, family photographs. So she went from looking at anatomy books, looking at National Geographic images,
00:13:32
Speaker
um early images of African people and indigenous people and so she was in that kind of territory of science or a sort of pseudo-academic territory and now she's more into a sort of personal constellation of stories that she doesn't put out there as being personal but she her archival research kind of changed and became more personal. But having said all this, her work is not hyper-realism. So for those who can't go to the show or haven't seen her work before, she built a way to produce recognizable imagery that pays homage to the history of drawing, where the characters are always drawn and therefore artificial or fictional. So you have a sense that she's not trying to portray herself as she is. She's not digging into her own image.
00:14:24
Speaker
She's using her image to tell a story, almost like a cartoon in some ways, although it's not cartoony, as as it were. Oh, the reason why she uses her own body is interesting because she says in an interview that she doesn't condemn you know people using other bodies and other images. But for her, she was kind of looking into the history. She's very aware of, and we'll talk about that, colonialism, post-colonialism times.
00:14:54
Speaker
especially having lived in South Africa. And she says that being a ah woman of color and realizing how in art history, other bodies were othered, you know, other bodies were othered and especially women were treated like um images of desire, but also images of enslavement.
00:15:16
Speaker
She didn't want to use other people's bodies and she uses her own because she can use and abuse it because it's her body and she can do whatever she wants with it. Interesting. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. It's interesting that that gave her more freedom rather than less freedom, you know, because I think there's so many artists than people that would be like, well, yeah, I can imagine this scenario by putting me in. It's a bit too hot to the touch, you know, but yeah, it's interesting that she had sort of the opposite stance on that.
00:15:45
Speaker
And that's how the background of an artist is interesting. I don't know much about her. She's around 44 years old or something. So there isn't a lot of things out there about her. But there's quite a few interviews. If ah you know our listeners are interested, there's really like a bunch of interviews on YouTube and online that are really interesting. But she does mention at some point that she worked as an actress and a dancer. She's used to using her own body. So it's interesting to see that for her, it's not a constraint.
00:16:15
Speaker
Like you say, it's freeing, but it wouldn't be for someone else. yeah um But I think it also makes for that cerebral intelligence that she has as well, right that atmosphere.
00:16:26
Speaker
And it also creates this idea of the alter ego, the doppelganger, the double, and having spoken about the substance, that works. Yeah. I was just thinking that. Yeah, totally. And it's like, you know, you wonder ah how she negotiated her own, her own internal dialogue about what she should or shouldn't look like in these images. You know, yeah mean it's got to be in there somewhere, right? I mean, she is not immune to societal pressure and she is you know living in a place and is of a place and and all of that would inform whether or not she's playing with an alter ego, if it's her own image, how much she can really dissect and pull apart from those beliefs she might have about
00:17:13
Speaker
who she is and what looking this way might mean as opposed to looking that way. I saw her many minutes ago doing in a um a talk in her gallery Tijuana Gallery at the time. Oh, yeah.
Cultural Identity and Personal Experiences
00:17:28
Speaker
We love by the way. We love Tijuana Gallery. They have amazing artists. And I remember looking at her and then looking at the works and thinking, oh, you know, because you kind of start connecting the dots. And I find that this idea that she has of this kind of fluid identity is patent in the figure, the human figure, which is kind of racially ambiguous because I thought it was an Asian character more
00:17:54
Speaker
like in terms of facial traits. And I love that. One of her shows when she at Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg recently was called You'll Be Sorry. And she says it's about the people who leave, who go away, are told, you'll be sorry for leaving. You'll come back. You'll be sorry for wanting to be an artist. You'll go back to a proper work. you know And she's she has this consciousness of how ah movement and displacement affects your identity. you know and and And it's much more than appearances that she's interested in. She's interested in the culture and in the the nuances of what you inherit, wherever you are in the world. And from what starting point you enter your life in or from, and then where you go to.
00:18:48
Speaker
And I think we can relate a lot to that, being ourselves, you know, this place, I mean, people who voluntarily went places rather than, you know, she's not, I don't know if you're confronted with that being American, but being Portuguese, people often think that I'm an immigrant from the diaspora or that my parents were living in France. um And I am that kind of intellectual immigrant And so there's always a kind of, for me, there's a kind of shifting of identities that's very strange. And I have, and I, it's not that I had to solve it, but it's something that I need, um that allows me, gives me the freedom to be a bit more fluid, I guess. And when I talk to my
00:19:37
Speaker
Portuguese peers who were second-generation immigrants, they have a a different experience than I do. So there's, I think there's a difference in that somehow. I kind of feel felt a connection with her, the academic side and the this kind of, I studied abroad, you know, that kind of thing, which I, the good good student kind of thing and the rebellious side that she's in at the moment that we'll talk about later.
00:20:01
Speaker
that I sensed, I may be wrong but I mean from her interviews I sensed a sort of rebellion about ah what it means to be a female artist and to be an artist and to be an artist who makes drawings and you know we'll we'll talk about it. Anyway going back to kind of her history so the colors are important as I mentioned before so ah blues were part of the work for a long time because she was concerned with questions of physics and almost sci-fi related issues, but now she uses more earthy tones as she started delving, like I was um talking about before, into a more personal catalogue of narratives. So she's doing a sort of personal archaeology, it seems, and thinking of her own ancestry in terms of this quest that she has about the universe, the history, the formation of things as they are, because as being interested in you know physics, she's also interested in history.
00:20:54
Speaker
a And because she was concerned with that, her mind went to the past and specifically to the histories of colonialism and art. We painted with pigments, with ochres and siennas drawn from the earth in prehistory. And she was also thinking of Botswana, of South Africa, where the landscape is earthy, brown, yellow, and the sky is white with heat. So the colors changed completely in her palette. And now,
00:21:24
Speaker
The palette also includes another color that comes from the wood panels. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I was going to ask you about that because, and we'll talk about this more. She uses wood panels in this exhibition. Is this something that she's used previously? Yes, she's done it before. I think it's ah a relatively new thing.
00:21:45
Speaker
And she says that she likes to work with the kind of patterns of the wood. Yeah, right. No, let's talk about that more later, because I think there's a lot of there there. There's a lot to say there. Yeah, right. So I just want to um quote an interview that she did for Studio International on the 24th of September of 2020, where um she talks about the figure and traces it back to the point where it disappeared. So it's really interesting to see how she was a bit conflicting conflicted about the figure before going into the exhibition where the figure is.
00:22:19
Speaker
everything, basically. So, quote, there was a time when the figure dropped away from my work. I stopped using it altogether for a few years when I was suspicious of how easy it is to tell stories using the figure. Around the time that I first moved to to Johannesburg, I really started focusing on space and landscape and scientific diagrams, as well as abstraction and other forms of notation.
00:22:48
Speaker
to suggest story or time or space without relying so much on the figure. Shortly after I became pregnant and suddenly right after I gave birth to my son, it became impossible not to use or deal with the figure in my work again. The experience of being pregnant, of carrying a child, of giving birth to a child,
00:23:08
Speaker
was truly transformative and had such an impact on my ideas around bodies as vessels, around ideas of history, heredity, genetics, DNA, biology, that it was undeniable that the figure was going to return within the work. Wow.
00:23:26
Speaker
Isn't this incredible? I find this quote incredible because we've talked about women who talk about giving birth and talk about the body and she goes immediately into heredity, history, DNA. She cannot help herself from being from attaching a very visceral experience to a kind of a wider scientific context. And I I love that. It's so incredible. It just says so much about who she is and where her head is and how she approaches her
Construction, Erasure, and Creative Process
00:24:00
Speaker
work. And and I love that i mean you know on a very basic level, it's like giving birth to a human puts the human puts the figure, the image, the figure back into her work itself.
00:24:11
Speaker
yeah nice connection Yeah, that's a really nice connection. She also describes as her practices building and the erasing, building and erasing, building and erasing. So she's interested in what remains in the remnants of cultures and rituals of knowledge and power. So the way she draws and makes an image She is such a devoted maker. Like we can say she's cerebral. She's just a very complete human being. I mean, she's incredibly intelligent, well-read. She has an imagination that is wild. And then she spends hours and hours making layers, working on her subjects and creating.
00:24:52
Speaker
these very textured images that, again, unify somehow. And now it would. I mean, it's really incredible. And so the way she draws is that, of course, because she layers and she creates those layers of narrative, she works, makes the images and scrap, scrap, scraps, or puts another layer on them. And I saw a video on YouTube where she has this beautiful image.
00:25:13
Speaker
And she's talking and she's working, she's talking about how process her her process and she's just applying, she's erasing a bit and then she's applying another layer on top of the, a bit of the perfect, perfect, perfect shape that she had just done. And I was like, woman, what are you doing? like That is beautiful.
00:25:31
Speaker
and you know this this this ability she has of building these images very carefully very you know painstakingly and having kind of this courage of like taking away putting it back thinking away putting something else back and it's really what she's interested in terms of the culture what remains of the culture what is lost what are we why are we you know um dressed in a certain way while also using these local you know patterns in South Africa? This mix of things and remnants of things that really, really interest her. And now that she's in the Netherlands, for example, she says that she's engaging with the romantic artists, for example. She's looking at European art. And she says that from her, that I think that's one of the most the things that I wanted to finish with with with her biography is that
00:26:25
Speaker
It's so interesting to see someone who has this very broad education and very broad experience, but that ultimately comes from the African country, the South Asian country where she lived you know during most of her younger years, and coming into the European art history as well.
00:26:46
Speaker
And she says that she's much more aware now that she's living in the Hague in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, that she's claiming a space in that history. So she's starting to paint as well. she in Although she sees it as drawing, she's using oils and she's using you know a canvas. And she does a lot of pattern making, which is when you're in the Netherlands, Mondrian and all of that.
00:27:10
Speaker
um you know and and this kind of patterned abstraction that they have over there, that's also you know something that she's claiming for her so herself, but coming at it from a completely opposite angle than someone who had been born in in in the Netherlands. So that's also really interesting, I think, in terms of the exhibition that we will be talking about So yeah, this is basically my my presentation, a very quick and probably very elliptical presentation of this awesome artist.
00:27:41
Speaker
No, that's brilliant. And it just it just fills in so many lines from just seeing the exhibition, which I really enjoyed and obviously we'll talk about next, but about you know who she is at ah as a person. and And you're right, she does does feel like you know that fundamental kind of artist that you know has as lived such a full life and has had these other interests and takes in sort of history and travel and legacies and, you know, in this in this very intentional way, it seems. um Yeah, so brilliant. Great. So why don't we take a short break and then we can come back and dig into the exhibition itself? Yeah, I think you might need a coffee or a tea. So let's do that. Yeah, but don't we all? So let's do it. See you in a bit.
Exhibition Experience and Spatial Design
00:28:51
Speaker
All right, welcome back. Let's get to the exhibition. We're here at the Curve at the Barbican and it's looking starkly different than the last time we were here for the piano papri. True that.
00:29:04
Speaker
couldn't be a more different feel. So rather than feeling like you're walking into a club, but you're sort of walking into a 1950s film set with this. So, I mean, which I have to say is why I've grown to love this space so much. It has a real chameleon kind of quality to it. And the artists draw on the inspiration from the space and from the Barbican, and it always feels quite unexpected.
00:29:29
Speaker
So this is no different and this is a really unique exhibition for a few reasons. Her use of materials, which we've sort of alluded to, her use of of wood and wood paneling to put the images on. There's this incredible set that I mean so crazy it was so crazy and it really had... I was wondering how you'd react to it. I loved it so much. I loved it so much which we will certainly get to and then you know she has this great exploration within the images themselves of the femme fatale and
00:30:08
Speaker
As you say, you know, from her history, she brings in so much a nuance to it and a very, very different take on this whole sort of, you know, film femme fatale trope that there is out there. So there are 19 paintings and drawings that are part of the exhibition that are all listed as scenes in a film. So when you look at the catalogue, it's like scene 38 and scene 19 or what have you.
00:30:37
Speaker
And they look at, they, you know, when, when you're looking at these images, they look Hitchcock-esque. There's lots of space in them. Kind of reminded me of Edward Hopper paintings where there is a coolness within them and the the figures themselves.
00:30:57
Speaker
feel alone together in a way. Yeah. um But they're also full of tension, anticipation, suspense. The intrigue is just absolutely abounds from them. So you see scenes of people, you know, watching other people unawares and, you know, people walking with a knife on the brink of violence. And there's that classic kind of film noir scene of Two people close up ah in a car, you know, in the front of a car, a driver and a passenger. And while you're in it, you're sort of kind of cheering for the protagonist or worried about the protagonist. And you kind of want to say things like, look out.
00:31:43
Speaker
and to You know, that there's ah there's a bit of that in there. But I want to read a bit from the exhibition guide that outlines the story being told because I think it's it's done very well. So this is a new body of work that presents the story of Bettina, a new character in the artist's everde developing ever-evolving cast of alter egos.
00:32:06
Speaker
Bettina arrives in a mid-century colonial outpost, learns to navigate the subtleties of her new rural life. We're invited to explore our protagonist's world through a series of film sets designed in collaboration with Remco Osorio Labat. Thanks for that pronunciation guidance earlier on that Joanna. These sets evoke domestic spaces, colonial bureaucracies, travel waiting rooms, religious gatherings,
00:32:34
Speaker
walking through these spaces, which are punctuated by painted scenes of Bettina's new life and connected by ramps and wooden walkways. So this is the the film set part of it. A multivariate narrative unfurls, exploring the ideas of migration, belonging, and freedom.
00:32:55
Speaker
So the the guide continues, son Sunstrom uses the aesthetic and narrative conventions of film noir to question the idea of the femme fatale, a reductive and often misogynistic depiction of women used in film. Taking inspiration from the Barbican as a space for performance and spectacle, Sunstrom draws a connection between the artifice of filmmaking and the social constructs that control, regulate and punish women who challenge the norm. So that's from the exhibition guide. And and yeah, I just love the performance.
00:33:33
Speaker
that's involved in the exhibition itself. And the good text. Yeah, it's a good text. A good text. Totally. It gives you enough without giving you too much, and it doesn't bedazzle you with lots of references to things that might not actually matter to you as you're walking through it. But I just want to do a quick aside about the name Bettina, because I got curious about why would she name her character Bettina?
00:34:02
Speaker
I also wondered, actually. Thanks for doing that. And it's an unusual name, right? You don't hear it very much. There's sort of derivatives or or but kind of near neighbors of it with Elizabeth.
00:34:14
Speaker
Betty, you know, that kind of thing. But according to Ancestry dot.com, the name derives from the Hebrew name Elisheba, which means God is my oath. But it was widely used in the Italian Renaissance scene. You get the sense of this main character as having a strong inner compass, but as also being quite artistic. So it might not be as popular as some contemporary names, but Bettina endures as a choice that Exudes individuality and a sense of strength. Furthermore, it's managed to transcend cultural and linguistic boundaries gaining recognition and admiration on a global scale.
00:34:56
Speaker
whether it's in the world of art, literature, or simply among families, the name Bettina remains a beautiful testament to the enduring power of spirituality and personal commitment. And so when I read that, I thought you know this really feels like a fitting name for this protagonist. I mean, she's somebody who has you know a very strong yeah at strong inner compass and has a bit of a flair. I mean, you have that Italian you know Renaissance connection.
00:35:27
Speaker
ah Do you know any Bettinas? I do, actually. I do. And I remember thinking, it was a German colleague of mine. And I remember thinking, what an unusual name. What a beautiful name. Bettina. Yeah, Ina, like, as well, kind of is very feminine, isn't it?
00:35:45
Speaker
It is a very feminine name, yeah. But the B gives us a sort of strength. So I understand the kind of thing of like strong moral compass, but at the same time artistic and centered. I mean, it's a beautiful name. Yeah, love it. But yeah, so as you go into the exhibition, all the scenes are drawn and painted onto wood panels. So sometimes the panels are in quadrants, sometimes they're two by three, sometimes a series of panels.
00:36:13
Speaker
And they're big. I mean, they're really big. yeah What I found fascinating about this was how the wood grain and the lines of the panels created their own tension and movement within the image that she created.
00:36:30
Speaker
So they the way she was constructing the image was in such a deep relationship with the grains. You can kind of feel her working against this natural grain within the wood itself and the way that she is you know setting up her horizon or points of interest within that and you know her her her individual lines creating some tension against them.
00:36:58
Speaker
And then also the lines that are created by the panels themselves. So the panels meet either at six panels, four panels, what have you. that those are creating additional lines in there that are adding tension to the image itself. I mean, you know, it's like, as I was walking through, my first thought was like, wow, what incredible pain, like it must have been to work with several panels and like get things to join up correctly. We've all wallpapered maybe at some point in life, you know, it's like getting the lines to, you know, heat up and kind of work and,
00:37:38
Speaker
And and it's it's all done so meticulously. i mean it gives the The grain itself gives the images a fluidity. And again, the images that are on them are sort of cooler, cerebral, hopper-esque, Hitchcock-esque kind of images. That's the story that they're telling. But then they're on this very fluid markings of the grain and with all of this extra tension within the the panels. I don't know if you came across
00:38:12
Speaker
anything where she's talking about um that choice of material the wood specifically yeah yeah so there's different reasons one of the reasons is exactly what you say which is the the fact that the lines of the wood can contribute to making a drawing And it's no wonder she speaks about the first pigments used in prehistory because in the caves already, you can see that some, you know, protuberances in the wall are used within the drawings of prehistoric drawings and paintings. So she's working like that. She's using the the wood like a wall, as it were. For her, it really is
00:38:52
Speaker
not giving in to, yielding to painting because she's not only painting, she's not producing. She's very connected to drawing because she talks about drawing as a provisional image. So while you're making a drawing, you're still thinking about what you're doing before the idea is stuck. And if you look at the the the images that she produced for this show, especially the patterns, she leaves them as drafts or annotations.
00:39:22
Speaker
So there it's really interesting how she can get so intensely into the figure, into some aspects of the drawings and the paintings, because this is a pencil and oil. So it's a completely hybrid kind of material onto the wood that is already producing these fluid um drawings and lines that she's taking.
00:39:43
Speaker
for herself as she makes the image. But the wood is also the lines of history. this I mean, it it is the lifetime, of the lifespan, and the growth of a living being. So she's also taking in that aspect of the material, which is like a wall. She's layering, as usual. She produces layers and layers and layers of meaning, and this time she does it in a way that also allows her not to be so laborious about her work. So she's she says that because she did wall drawings, wall drawings are incredibly painstaking. I mean, it it really is a labor of love. I mean, it takes a long time to make. They're ephemeral.
00:40:26
Speaker
It's going to be painted over and you're there in a space that is not your space. You're in the middle of the museum with the whole team around you and the life of the museum around you or wherever. And so she realized that at one point she was working on the mural drawing. She looked around and she realized that everyone was being paid except her.
00:40:46
Speaker
oh And she thought, I am putting so much work into this. Her drawings are so incredibly delicate, intricate, lead. Even the the drawings she made on paper, that she thought, okay, I must allow myself to get some shortcuts in at some point. And there's another aspect of it, which is that you know that she talks about this good girl, good student thing of like wanting to make, wanting to produce, wanting to show that there's a lot of work into the drawings.
00:41:22
Speaker
And now she's letting go. And she's like, I'm going to let the material work its magic as well. and And you can see it in the drawings that they're very intentional at points and very led and super worked on. And other bits are more annotations, and they work really well together. And then she uses the oil pan the oil paint to create atmospheres and to create a whole ambiance just with one stroke of color.
00:41:48
Speaker
And there's another thing is that she works on the paper a lot and she realized that the paper couldn't endure the the way it was she was hurting it. And at some point it has. And so she had to move on to canvas, she had to move on to wood panels, which is what she's found recently that kind of allows her, they don't break, they don't tear.
00:42:15
Speaker
and that's and so she can do a lot on them. And they also contribute with something already, as it were, to start with, because they already have lines. And at the same time, it is a poor material, a little bit like the the the paper, because paper is made from trees. So it's still the same material.
00:42:33
Speaker
with a completely different presentation, but still allowing the work to be provisional, as she says. It's not fixed. It can be added onto. There's something about um drawing that's really important to her and this idea of the alter ego being a fluid entity.
00:42:55
Speaker
this idea of instability is really important to her so that's yeah that's that's what she and then like that she's kind of at this point of like um No, like I need to give myself a break as an artist and I need to find ways to work on the philosophy, work on the heritage, work on the tradition, work on the ideas, work on the materials, work on the images in the way that is not this kind of good girl, good student kind of thing where i find shortcuts and I'm really happy with the way I'm doing things now. And I just said, well, kudos to her. Yeah, well done. Absolutely. So there are these images and then there are the sets. How fun is that?
00:43:43
Speaker
You can, I mean, when you walk in, you immediately see, you know, this wooden ramp kind of leading you down. And then you're on this elevated platform. You're going through walkways that have been constructed. And there's a, you know, there's bench, there's a bench there. There's like a, you know, a sink with a window. And I mean, it's all just wood. It's unadorned.
00:44:12
Speaker
So it really gives a lot of room for the imagination and then you walk further down and there's a podium. And what I loved about that is like you're both, you're both front, you're both on stage and backstage at the same time. So you're kind of seeing the the sets from both sides. As if they weren't ready yet for the film. Yeah. yeah It's virgin wood, so it's not painted on. yeah They're like sketches in some ways as well. Oh, yeah. That's a good point. Yeah, absolutely. And they're the same material as the wood panels, so you're kind of walking on the the film
00:44:51
Speaker
that is making the story because the wood panels are drawings but they're also the film so they're also kind of a ah film that is kind of like uh stagnant and you're the one walking and making it happen so yeah it's it's it's yeah it's very clever very well done yeah yeah i thought it was really really well done and then there's the whole atmospheric thing of the smell of the wood i mean you it is absolutely everywhere and you can hear it creaking under your feet, you know what I mean? It's like, busy because you're obviously in a temporary space, you know? Yeah. And yeah, no, I found it irresistible. It's like the the longer I was there, I could sort of allow myself to go up to the podium and give my best Kamala Harris speech or something.
00:45:42
Speaker
You know, go to the sink and pretend to wash dishes as you're sort of looking out at whatever this window is out on, whatever your imagination would like to fill it in with.
00:45:54
Speaker
you know there's some I mean, my my stepdaughter has twins and they have those little kitchen sets. I remember as a kid, like just being fascinated with those and it's like a play, you know? And it gives you that sort of playful permission, that permission to be playful within within the set. And it's like, you know, there was almost a little bit of cognitive dissonance because you're looking at the images and you're like,
00:46:26
Speaker
Oh, be careful. You know, you're in perilous danger here. Something's gone awfully wrong. I'm not totally sure what it is. But then at the same time, you're like, Oh, wow, a sink. Let's pretend let's play kitchen, you know, play but yeah, it's um, yeah, and I just I really liked the way that the set brought you into the story in a way and the theatricalness of the story. But then it almost had its own thing altogether. Yes. Yeah. You know, cultural aspects. Yeah, absolutely. You know, that it's like even if the even if the images weren't there, it's it's it's a it's a real presence and it it's something to, you know, that welcomes you in to a different mindset. But yeah, it was great.
00:47:17
Speaker
yeah Yeah it was very strange because this idea that she's working on with kind of like retracting and kind of giving you the story by other means works really well because you know sometimes less is more it's true because you so the entrance is this sort of zigzaggy passage with like a mid-sized wall that makes you think of airports And then you go and you zigzag into this place and you're like at the airport. You're traveling somewhere, so you're no longer at the curve, you're no longer at the barbeque, and you're somewhere else. And it was so effective. Just that performative aspect of the show, each aspect of that part, like you say, of that structure is the airport. Then you're in a waiting room. Then you're in an interior, you're in a home, and it ends
00:48:15
Speaker
in the court, in court. But yeah, I just I thought that that was just such an unexpected, I didn't expect myself to find to be on a film set and to have that sense of play and immersion, you know, that added immersion into the scenes take place. So that was just such a great joy of of the exhibition itself. So um We talked about some of the materials, we talked about the set.
Femme Fatale Archetype and Character Analysis
00:48:48
Speaker
um Now let's talk about her treatment of patina as a femme fatale. Such a big archetype. So i I again did a little looking into kind of what do we mean when we talk about a femme fatale?
00:49:06
Speaker
And there's obviously a lot out there on on this kind of archetype, but I got the, I'm going to quote a bit from ScreenCraft dot.org and they talk about the femme fatale as defined as the femme fatale is a character archetype you can't, simply you simply can't take your eyes off of.
00:49:26
Speaker
So think of Sharon Stone's Catherine Tramwell in Basic Instinct. Like her or loathe her, the femme fatale is usually the most intriguing presence on screen. She's both desirable, diabolical, captivating, conniving. Like the male protagonist, she's often paired with. You can't help but want to be with her, but you don't dare double cross her.
00:49:51
Speaker
So the history of the femme fatale is a complex one. She's featured in stories from many centuries, often portrayed as a deceptive seductress or even a mystical priestess. And typically only through the male gaze, only recently has there been a female reappropriation of the femme fatale archetype in cinema. Now she's not so much overly sexualized,
00:50:17
Speaker
and therefore bad or evil, but a passionate woman whose anger is fueled by the sordid history of women being routinely dismissed and not heard or respected." And I and i thought that was really interesting. I mean, because you look at Bettina, and she is not actualizing her life through the male gaze. you know I mean, she is.
00:50:39
Speaker
she is She eventually at some point seems to fall prey to it, yeah um but she's clearly not um falling into that category, especially visually, especially in terms of the visual rendition of the character and the characterization of this woman, of Bettina, is really not conducive to what you've just read.
00:51:03
Speaker
Yeah, she's not a young woman. I mean, the introductory scene of Bettina is her walking into this kind of rural road. She has a big coat on. She's carrying a couple of suitcases. She's in sensible shoes, you know, I mean, yeah, for the time. but Yeah. Yeah. And she um she's, I guess, middle aged. I don't know. It's kind of hard to age.
00:51:31
Speaker
age her, but I'm guessing she's she doesn't look like a particularly young woman. She's not a scantily clad white blonde woman. Yes, that she's actually the opposite. Yeah, yeah exactly. I saw this exit this interview with Sunstrom at Goodman Gallery, so it's a video, um and she talks about a particular painting I think she did, painting slash drawing she did.
00:52:01
Speaker
um for the exhibition that she um that she had going on there at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg, I think in 2021, around that time, or 2022. And there's a painting there called Tips.
00:52:16
Speaker
And I think that starts something, which is it looks a bit like, I'm going to say it in English, Paula Rigo's work, Palma Río for us Portuguese, where, you know, she always uses the same kind of woman. Paula Rigo worked with the model, always the same model, same as Pamela Fatima Sundstrom. And there is something about that painting called Tips.
00:52:41
Speaker
which really made me think of Paula Rego because the woman is crouching. You can't see a chair. She's in a very awkward position. Her under skirts are visible and there's, it's called tips because you can see tips of knives. And so there's a whole,
00:52:58
Speaker
Strand, thematic Strand in Suntram's recent work, which is women with knives. And she talks about that image and she said that she finds it, she found it really strange that people talked about this image as a difficult image, um of this image as a sort of menacing image. And when you actually think about it, women have been dealing with the most murderous weapon apart from obviously mechanic weapons.
00:53:23
Speaker
since the dawn of time because women cook. It's not a weapon, it's just an everyday thing that you would use in the kitchen. what Why is that image so menacing and so fanfatal, you know, she's already working in that in distorting that archetype by saying, okay, where is the fan fatale? And she quotes a scene of Pan's Labyrinth, Guillermo del Toro's film, where the spy was the woman in the kitchen. And she says that she loves that character because it's an unsuspecting spy. No one will think of her.
00:54:02
Speaker
And I've heard, I don't know if this is a myth or not, but someone one told me a few years back that the MI5 was looking for female, for middle-aged women as new recruits because they would be the people that that nobody would suspect would be spies.
00:54:25
Speaker
Boy, I don't know. Is that insulting or? I don't know. Is that a compliment? I don't know. I think it's both. It's probably both is what she's trying to tell us. And she's, you know, this is a this is a woman who's obviously holding a knife in a few of the images. I mean, a couple I can think of in particular. And there's a dead person in one of the images and you think,
00:54:51
Speaker
that she has obviously been involved in a murder in some way. um In one scene you see her, you know, there's lots of the kind of tropes of the the film noir, you know, which involves headlights in the rain and suspicious glances, and in some of them it's hard to piece exactly what's going on, piece together exactly what's going on, but In one scene, you see her organizing a defense, I think, with another woman, which I really liked. It's like, you know, two women, and they're dressed in more masculine clothes, but they're in an office filled with books, and you can tell they're kind of plotting out what the what the defense is going to be. Because, I mean, in the next scene, or or very nearly in the next scene anyway, you see the the courtroom and the
00:55:42
Speaker
all of the jury, which is mostly men, that are kind of looking on to the scene of of what's going on. and But one that I loved so much, one of the scenes, is you see her in bed with a lover, and you would imagine, post-Coitus, and she has her cigarette, and she she holds it over his mouth so that he can have a drag of it. ah and And there was just something so possessive.
00:56:14
Speaker
about that that you know that I loved so much. I mean, she's kind of curled up next to him in sort of a more typical kind of ah you know way. you know He's not curled up in her arm. There's a lyric in a Beyonce song in Formation where she says, when he fuck me good, I take his ass to Red Lobster.
00:56:39
Speaker
kind of It kind of reminded me of that. It's like, she's like, oh, here sweetie, go ahead and have a little, yeah, no drag of my cigarette kind of thing. yeah But yeah, it's- She holds the power. She's holding the power. Yeah. I mean, she's like through- She's holding the pleasure. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And you you get that sense throughout that she's, there's so much agency, uh,
00:57:07
Speaker
You know, I mean, you know if you look again, the name Bettina, my oath is to God. It's like, there's she's she has a compass, she has autonomy, she is you know making decisions in this really terrible situation that she's gotten herself in. And in the end, that beautiful bridge picture, I assume it's Bettina walking in the bridge, but is it a lover? Is she meeting a lover? I couldn't quite tell.
00:57:37
Speaker
Or was it this friend? I mean, cause she has this friend. Yeah. Who is herself? ah Yeah. A little bit like in the substance. That she's new to this town and she's, it's a rural town and she's trying to kind of figure out the, you know, the way of life there. And she obviously makes some faux pas, you know, and it, and has upset people.
00:58:03
Speaker
and it has generated all of this suspicion. I mean, maybe some guy made a pass at her and she denounced him denounced him or you know humiliated him in some way, maybe publicly. you know they have become He has then become a threat to her and she has to defend
Art, Cinema, and Emotional Impact
00:58:26
Speaker
herself.
00:58:26
Speaker
ah huh I mean, that's one way. That's so interesting. What came to mind for you? I had a completely different expectation for this exhibition. So i I have to say, I was a bit taken aback. Maybe taken aback is too strong of ah an expression. But I was a bit surprised to see that there were no led images, which I think is one of her strong suits. It's one of the strong aspects of her work. And I love this
00:58:58
Speaker
thing that she does, which is um figure and landscape, a little bit like the Mona Lisa, figure, huge landscape behind. And I love that. And that gives me a feeling of childhood longing and a adult projection. you know There's something about it and the curiosity, because in back back in previous experiences of her work, I didn't understand her images.
00:59:27
Speaker
And I love that, which is one of those artists where I'm really fascinated. And so I get to the exhibition and I see things that really do not interest me, like art emulating cinema, sick of it. The Fanfatal cannot handle it anymore. It does not interest me in any way, shape or form. So I get go into it and I'm like, oh,
00:59:53
Speaker
this is This is the theme. This is what we're working with. She grabs me immediately. I'm completely in it. Love it. Love the drawings. Love this that this the set. Love everything about it. Yeah, that's interesting what you were saying about the layering and that being such an intrinsic aspect to what her previous work was about.
01:00:16
Speaker
and looking at that through this lens, you know, that it is layering scenes on top of one another in a way, but also obviously the layering over the natural grain of the wood, I guess, is in there as well. But yeah, having not been you know aware of her previous work, ah yeah, that's that's fascinating. I mean, I think, you know, in terms of plot, I don't think she invites you to consider what's happening.
01:00:45
Speaker
you know Oh, you don't think? Yeah. i Well, i I mean, because I didn't feel that either. I mean i i actually thought that was a notable thing. you know I mean, a film generally has a plot and you're coming into a film space. Yes. And there's obviously, you're seeing some plot points.
01:01:04
Speaker
but without the you know bits in between, so you don't really have the context for it. Exactly. But what I what i felt while I was there was the emotion of it rather than the plot of it, you know was the precariousness of her situation and the consequentialness of her situation. I mean, her life is going to change no matter what. It has changed in the scenes that you've seen.
01:01:32
Speaker
But I think you're right. yeah I think you're right. I think she doesn't want you. Yeah, you're absolutely right. She doesn't want you to create a very specific plot in those images. Yeah, because it's about who is this person that is playing something like a femme fatale role in a very different context and in a very approached very, very differently.
01:01:59
Speaker
And how does that make you feel? Because if she were a gorgeous blonde, you know, siren sort of femme fatale,
01:02:11
Speaker
I would feel a lot differently about all of these images, you know, but she's she's creating a different sort of feeling because of the person that she's included in there, and only Sunstrom knows what she was going for there, but I i didn't feel necessarily like that was the intention was for me to fill in the plot points. Yeah, for eight percent you're the camera and you're the projecting projecting entity but in a psychological way. Totally. And the thing is, there aren't many men, if you think about it. The men are kind of like sketchy,
01:02:52
Speaker
in the in not sketchy and dodgy but sketched. into the certain scenes, but yeah it's mostly, I mean, men are very, very present at the end in the court scene, in the court space. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, that's true. But it's very female driven. Like there's a, there's a plot hole there where you don't quite, and that's ah to to corroborate where you were saying, we don't quite, there's a dead male, but then that's it. I mean, that there's a death.
01:03:25
Speaker
And that's what she wants you to to work with. But she's not characterizing, but also because she works with her own figure and her own body so and her own image. So of course, i I wonder how technically that works. I would like to ask her that question. If you work with yourself, then when you're doing male bodies, what do you do? Is it still you? And is it the reason why they' they aren't as present because at the end there's a lot of images probably in the same way as she did before like looking up images of people. To the femme fatale there's always the the sort of victim of the femme fatale which is the male
01:04:05
Speaker
protagonists they're usually a protagonist right the male victims of the femme fatale um but they're absent here almost and they're murdered so it's like we're in bed getting a drag off of her oh right well smoking or being exactly overpowered by by the Fanfatal. Maybe it's like as if the worst nightmare of the Fanfatal came true and she actually crushed the male protagonist. It might be that. I mean, there's so many ways of reading. She's talking to people who know what this genre is and who can play with it, I think, and so in some ways. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Cool. I love that you got over that hurdle of like a bit of
01:04:52
Speaker
I don't know, film stuff, femme fatale. I'm not sure this theme is driving with me, but that she took you in through a pathway that made you go, oh, actually, as you know, I'm feeling this, you know, that's a nice feeling to get over some of, yeah you know, your own preconceived notions of things.
01:05:12
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's like the substance if you I read about it and I was like, everyone's saying this is great, but it's not the kind of thing that really attracts me. And I'm a bit sick of it, you know, yeah the female disempowerment. And then you go and you're like, OK, you found a new way to tell an old story.
01:05:33
Speaker
yeah Yeah, I mean I'm still not super into the imagery because so that's something we didn't talk about which is the fact that she's been exploring um history and she's now mid-century and she's fascinated with that era because she explains that it's a moment important in the African continent where you were completely contaminated since Victorian times by an aesthetic and her women before were kind of Victorian
01:06:06
Speaker
clothed and now she's drawing into the 20th century mid-century at a time where there's a lot of European and Western aesthetics in furnishings and houses and clothing and even behavior but at the same time there's an African context and there's clearly the beginnings of revolution coming like this um this first rumors and and and um starting points of independence,
01:06:44
Speaker
um consciousness and desire. And she's really interested in that moment because that's the moment where things get complex because there is this overlapping of ways of living and at the same time, this very specific need of cutting ties with that power.
01:07:03
Speaker
that came from Europe and and other places and so um the aesthetic is that the aesthetic of that time and I don't know why I kind of wonder I've been wondering ever since I went to the exhibition why am I so sick of it Why am I so sick of that? And the bit surprised that someone who has the research power that she has um to go into something that for me is a bit of a tired trope. And why do I think it's a tired trope? I don't know. Yeah. I mean, it's been done a lot.
01:07:38
Speaker
So, know I guess that's, ah you know, and we've seen it all in a certain way, a lot of times, and I guess maybe that's the reason why she wanted to revisit it, you know, yes it has been done a ton, and it's always been done, or very often been done in a certain way, and she's like, you know, we could there is another spin to this. There's an aspect of this that has not been explored. And I think it's 19 scenes, right? Like it's a night, you know, it's if you have an idea, a theme that is somewhat familiar, you know, in a short space of time, maybe that's a way to bring people into something, uh, ease more easily. I don't know. That might not hold up because I'm just thinking of like,
01:08:27
Speaker
you know, the twain thing of like, I didn't have enough time to write a short letter. It's like, you know, I mean, in a way that could make it more difficult, you know, to encapsulate that that could work that way is quite frankly that logic, but There's been a few films that' come that that came about one of them being this horrendous film with two amazing actresses, Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain. Oh, I just watched that, Mother's Instinct, right? Mother's Instinct, exactly. yeah yeah And then I re-watched The Hours as well.
01:09:02
Speaker
recently. We are on the same clock. I just watched the re- I just re-watched the show as well. as well No, I have lost one. Emily, we were meant to be Emily. Yeah, totally.
01:09:14
Speaker
ah That's so funny. And i have I had a really visceral reaction to these. Everyone was dressed alike. In Mother's Instinct, the best thing you could get was ah and a pearl necklace that was the highlight of your life to get the same pearl necklace that every woman had. I mean, come on, for Christ's sakes, the 50s were not that neat. It really is this projecting onto the past of a time that never was. She is breaking that for sure. Like the, I haven't watched that film yet, um the The Black Weston, that, what's his name, Jordan Peele directed. I haven't seen it now.
01:09:59
Speaker
I haven't watched that yet, but I loved Get Out and I loved the other one about doppelgangers, um which is kind of like shifting perspectives in ways that are unexpected and kind of breaks that neatness that we are trying to hold on to too much in film in some ways.
01:10:20
Speaker
So she's probably doing that very knowingly so, knowing she's talking to a certain audience that has a certain education, film education, and and that perhaps, you know, are going to very quickly piece that up, um you know, and the education that she has too, that we share. She talks a lot about Hitchcock and about how um a little bit like her. Apparently it took him like a bunch of days to decide on the gray suit for Kim Novak in Vertigo. you know And she's she's drawn to that. She's also in love, I think, with that that storytelling way of that time, which was so nice, which was elliptical. Contrary to the substance, which is
01:11:08
Speaker
too much, yeah which is filling in the narrative with more and more details. And she's I think she's drawn to that way of storytelling, which was about not illustrating, not showing, but hinting at. And all the images that you see in the exhibition are images between the event that you don't see. It was like sex in those times, like they were going to the room, they kissed, and scene was the morning after, like you would not show the sex scene.
01:11:43
Speaker
um And the murder is also in Hitchcock. You don't see really the gruesome side of murder. There's hardly any blood. um So yeah, yeah, I think you're right. I think that's it. I think she knows exactly that we will piece together, you know, what she's talking about very quickly. And at the same time, she's kind of like completely breaking that mold. Thank you, everyone, for listening. And thanks, Joanna. This is great. I mean, it was so nice to hear more about Sundstrom's work and ah how it contributed and influenced this really incredible exhibition that she's put together for the Barbican and just so fulsome and participatory, which was a really nice surprise. So thank you.
01:12:31
Speaker
Well, thank you, Emily. This, as usual, was a pleasure and you made me understand things that I didn't quite get coming into the episode. So that was really fantastic as usual. Thanks for hanging in with us. I hope you enjoyed this