Michelle Williams Gamaker in conversation, Artsadmin

Artist Michelle Williams Gamaker who will discuss the production of her new work ‘The Fruit is There to be Eaten’ based on British directors Powell and Pressburger’s film ‘Black Narcissus’ (1947). To echo the film having been shot at Shepperton Studios (despite being set in India), the video is shot in Sands Film Studios, Rotherhithe.

In the 1939 Rumer Godden novel of the same name, the relationships between an Indian lower-caste dancing girl and two British missionary nuns were primarily established on colonial benevolence. Michelle's work addresses this dynamic by having these characters come to recognise that they are trapped in a film set in 2017, marking 70 years of Indian Independence.

Michelle’s work explores the legacy of colonialism, to provoke in viewers a revision of the traditional roles of women – as well as the hegemony of gender binaries – in the patriarchal structure of colonialism.