Directed by PIETRA BRETTKELLY
“The Art Star And The Sudanese Twins” follows artist Vanessa Beecroft’s intentions to adopt orphaned twins and how this decision bleeds into her art and her personal life.
Vanessa Beecroft operates in the world of high art and high society. Over the last few years, she has been drawn to the Sudan because of the genocide, and then ultimately to the Sudanese twins she met in an orphanage. But at what cost to her personal life?
For sixteen months, “The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins” follows Vanessa with an often brutal honesty as she exposes the truth about her life, her creative process, her struggle with depression, her volatile relationship with her husband, and her love for the twins.
Vanessa found the undernourished babies in an orphanage, on her first day, on her first visit to Sudan and immediately she began breastfeeding the babies. She wanted to “save them”, and she spent months trying to adopt them – but is she just another wealthy white celebrity seeking to adopt an exotic child? Vanessa asks herself that same question. Her husband Greg initially knew nothing of her adoption moves and then was horrified by her intentions.
Vanessa Beecroft’s work is provocative and controversial. She has gained notoriety with her nude tableaux of dozens of naked women standing motionless in stark locations. The critics could never decide if it was feminism or exploitation.
Alongside the fireworks of her personal life, we witness her artistic drive. A photo session is interrupted with a hammering on the church doors. Women from the orphanage want the twins back. Vanessa is photographing them naked which upsets their local customs.
“Vanessa Beecroft is one of very few artists who has developed a fresh way to make a work of art. It’s uncanny. This is a new focus. There’s never been anything like the double breastfeeding photo. It is a disturbing beauty.” Jeffrey Deitch, New York Gallerist
“The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins” is a timely documentary exploring the first world woman’s aspirations to adopt from a developing country. And the risks to her marriage and her career that one woman takes to “save” Sudanese twins.
