Distant Relative
Michelle Williams Gamaker
12 September – 19 October 2019
Distant Relative is a reconstruction; somewhere between schoolroom, cinema, and court of law. It is a site of shared and elusive personal histories. Since 2014, British moving image and performance artist Michelle Williams Gamaker has been developing ‘fictional activism’: the restoration of people of colour who performed in 20C British and Hollywood films. Such performers here migrate from marginalised characters to central figures, returning in her work to challenge the fictional injustices to which they have been historically consigned.
Distant Relative marks a chapter in this exploration, with a focus on Williams Gamaker’s selfconfessed obsessive journey into the life of Hollywood film star Sabu, whom she first came
across as a teenager in Black Narcissus (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1947). Sabu was ‘discovered’ in 1936 by anthropologist filmmaker Robert Flaherty who, after gathering
footage in a maharajah’s palace, brought the 12-year-old son of a mahout [elephant driver] from Mysore to Hollywood. Flaherty cast him in Alexander Korda’s Elephant Boy (1937), which catapulted Sabu to international stardom. Sabu went on to major roles such as Abu in The Thief of Bagdad, 1940 and Mowgli in The Jungle Book, 1942. He became a household name,
appearing on stamps and tea sets, endorsing cereals, starring at the 1939 San Francisco World’s Fair and featuring in lifestyle magazines on both sides of the Atlantic.
across as a teenager in Black Narcissus (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1947). Sabu was ‘discovered’ in 1936 by anthropologist filmmaker Robert Flaherty who, after gathering
footage in a maharajah’s palace, brought the 12-year-old son of a mahout [elephant driver] from Mysore to Hollywood. Flaherty cast him in Alexander Korda’s Elephant Boy (1937), which catapulted Sabu to international stardom. Sabu went on to major roles such as Abu in The Thief of Bagdad, 1940 and Mowgli in The Jungle Book, 1942. He became a household name,
appearing on stamps and tea sets, endorsing cereals, starring at the 1939 San Francisco World’s Fair and featuring in lifestyle magazines on both sides of the Atlantic.