Michelle Williams Gamaker
Critical Affection Trilogy at the Barbican Center, London
Screening and artist talk with Dr Kulraj Phullar.
The completed Critical Affection Trilogy (2021-2026) by Michelle Williams Gamaker, will be screened together for the first time next month at the Barbican Center, London.
Wed 7 Oct 2026, 18:20
Booking essential £15.5 (link below)
The Critical Affection Trilogy comprises Strange Evidence (2025), which premiered at Matt’s Gallery in March 2026, Thieves (2023), and The Bang Straws (2021). Across these films, the artist reimagines critical alternatives to colonial and imperialist storytelling in early 20th-century British and Hollywood studio films.
Williams Gamaker's latest, Strange Evidence (2025, 30 mins), is a genre bending Body Horror/Film Noir, focusing on the 1930s British/Hollywood screen star Merle Oberon, who kept her mixed Sri Lankan, Indian and British heritage secret to protect her industry status. Through what Williams Gamaker calls Fictional Healing, the film offers a speculative exploration of Oberon's self-censorship, examining the racial stigma, trauma and industry pressures that shaped her choices.
Thieves (2023, 27mins 27secs) is Williams Gamaker’s first film in Fictional Revenge. The film is a fantasy adventure that retells the 1924 black-and-white and 1940 Techinicolor versions of The Thief of Bagdad. Williams Gamaker reimagines the marginalised characters as claiming leading roles in her film, played in the originals by Chinese-American actor Anna May Wong and Indian-born American actor Sabu. Williams Gamaker unites the two as fictional allies to challenge the racial discrimination of the film industry.
The Bang Straws (2021, 17mins 11secs) reworks the casting process of Sidney Franklin’s The Good Earth (1937), a film known for German-American actor Luise Rainer being cast as a Chinese character, O-Lan, wearing racist ‘yellow face’ as many 20th Century Hollywood and British actors did. Despite Chinese-American actor Anna May Wong’s talent and evident desire to play O-Lan, MGM refused her the lead due to the Hays Code’s anti-miscegenation Policy. Instead, Anna was offered the minor role of sex worker Lotus instead, which she refused.
Following the screening, Michelle Williams Gamaker will be in a fifteen minute conversation with Dr Kulraj Phullar.
Strange Evidence was co-commissioned by Matt's Gallery, London and Offline, Glasgow.
Standard tickets are £15.50 and can be purchased via the Barbican website, using the link below.
Barbican Center
Silk Street
London
EC2Y 8DS