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The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins

A documentary by: Pietra Brettkelly featuring Vanessa Beecroft.

Madonna of the art stunt

Extraordinary documentary records artist's chaotic life, and controversial efforts to adopt Sudanese twins

By Katherine Monk

Canwest News Service April 3, 2009

 

****

Anyone seeking proof of the adage "truth is stranger than fiction" need look no further than The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins, easily one of the most bizarre non-fiction journeys ever recorded on film.

The film touches on everything from celebrity adoption of African babies, to chronic marital issues, mental illness and art's place in the political world. The documentary from New Zealand filmmaker Pietra Brettkelly moves from side to side like an ink-jet printer, spitting out small dots that only resolve once the job is done.

Frankly, even when the end-credits roll, there's more than one read on what the film means -- or even what it's all about -- and when it comes to making movies about art, that may be the only way to approach its inherent abstractions -- with a taste for chaos.

Certainly, that's the way Vanessa Beecroft approaches her art. One of the superstars of the European art scene, thanks to her many performance and conceptual pieces that use live models in various states of undress, Beecroft sees art as a dynamic force more than a static artifact.

The half-British, half-Italian creator embraces work with political edges. She's happy to shock and provoke, and when we first meet her in the opening frames of Brettkelly's film, she's painting a group of black women with black paint. A moment later, she's asking one of her assistants to help her: "I need more blood!" she says.

Eventually someone shows up with a bucket of sticky, bright red liquid that Beecroft pours over the women, who now lie naked and motionless on the floor of a Venetian fish market.

Brettkelly cuts in and out of this creation sequence for Beecroft's last Venice Biennale installation, VB61: Still Death! Darfur Still Deaf? over the course of the movie. At first, one wonders if the choice to move in and out of this jarring image was motivated by the sheer drama of the optics alone. Then, by the midway point, it's clear why Brettkelly chose to use the Darfur installation as the central artistic motif: the piece operates as a reflecting mirror to Beecroft's life and oeuvre, and came out of one particular experience she had in Sudan.

Shortly after Beecroft landed in Sudan for a different art project she encountered two malnourished, Sudanese twins. Beecroft was lactating because she'd recently given birth, and sensing a need she could fill, she offered up her mammaries to the supposed orphans.

For two weeks, she bonded with the two little boys. Then, she decided she wanted to take them home.
Beecroft's desire to play saviour to the twins is not surprising. Moreover, in these days of superstar adoptions by the likes of Madonna and Angelina Jolie, Beecroft's maternal urge is almost fashionable.

Yet, as the legal details begin to bubble to the surface over the course of several months, we learn the twins actually have a father and an extended family. Undeterred, though slightly guilty about the idea of "taking the children from their father," Beecroft perseveres.

She's used to being a bulldozer. Self-possessed and a self-confessed depressive, Beecroft says she's not the kind of person to back down, or shut up. She does what she wants, and when things don't go her way she actually seems stunned by the idea that the entire world isn't there to support her every whim.
Beecroft's monolithic ego is what makes her a great artist -- she is unafraid -- but it leads to problems in every other facet of her life.

She's a good person, and she's desperate to be seen as a good person, but she's also got mental health issues to deal with. We learn that she and her husband have had such terrible fights that police have been called. She talks about her bouts of depression and rage, followed by stints of pharmacologically induced numbness.

In the end, Beecroft chose to ditch the pills in favour of the roller coaster ride that inspires her art, and watching her spill buckets of sticky red ooze over sprawling bodies, she couldn't look happier -- or more at home.

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