University Arts London: Madame B: Explorations in Emotional Capitalism with Michelle Williams Gamaker and Mieke Bal

Madame B was an immersive video installation which examined the link between capitalism and romance in relation to Gustave Flaubert’s 1856 novel Madame Bovary. It was a collaboration between Dutch cultural theorist and video artist Mieke Bal and British video and performance artist Michelle Williams Gamaker.

Working anachronistically to highlight the novel’s shocking contemporaneity, Madame B opened up historical and contemporary connections between economics and romantic love, desire, consumption and loneliness. Divided into eight key scenes and split across 19 screens, the installation framed the complex drives at play in the lived experiences of women – both then and now. Through an immersive video experience, Madame B showed how these factors have persisted over the 150 years since Flaubert’s novel was published.

Bal and Williams Gamaker’s interdisciplinary practice oscillates between research and creative making, reflection and articulation. The exhibition reflected key teaching methods employed at Central Saint Martins, such as visualising critical discourse and supporting experimental creative and exhibition practices.

www.arts.ac.uk/colleges/central-saint-martins/whats-on/lethaby-gallery/lethaby-gallery-2019/madame-b-explorations-in-emotional-capitalism