14th July 2014
So after coming back from my whirlwind trip to Brussels, I was bursting with enthusiasm to make new work. After being amongst so many other women of African, Caribbean and Pacific descent, conversing and seeing how they are using their bodies within their own work compelled me to continue making work that relates to the black female body. Being included in the Where We’re At! Other Voices on Gender exhibition at BOZAR, Centre for Fine Arts has significantly helped me understand my practice in a global context, beyond the Australian art scene.
Being included in the Where We’re At! Other Voices on Gender exhibition at BOZAR, Centre for Fine Arts has significantly helped me understand my practice in a global context, beyond the Australian art scene.
Social Conditioner (working title) is an idea that continues on from the aesthetic and conceptual underpinnings of my early photographic work including my hybrid video Afrophobia, which explores the black female body, way back when I was still undertaking my Bachelor degree in Fine Arts – a space where I struggled big time to gain any comprehension or valid support from my peers for the work I was interested in making, particularly around issues such as, Pacific diasporic identity, cross cultural identity and the lack of representation of black/non-european people in Australian media and history. It led me to anger, frustration and to the library to read, critical writers such as Coco Fusco, bell hookes, Michelle Wallace and Franz Fanon amongst others.
I’m hoping to develop some other work into a solo exhibition, which is long overdue and tie in a lot of other issues associated with hair, skin tone and identity through other tactile and digital works. Watch this space…
