A photographic exhibition opening in Footscray this week is exploring the desire to connect to a land as an uninvited visitor.
TextaQueen’s Eve of Reconstruction, a series set in the Australian landscape, was created late last year during a period of “personal grief” while undertaking an artist residency at Bundanon in New South Wales, on Wodi Wodi country.
The artist, who is best known for her felt-tip work, said the photos combine science-fiction and costumes created from the natural surrounds.
“It’s the second in a series of photos where I’m contemplating what it means to look through a neo-colonialism prism, but as a brown body,” she said.
“It is looking at what might be projected onto me, and how to disrupt that.”
The exhibition comes as TextaQueen was last Friday announced as one of 15 recipients of the State Library of Victoria’s 2017-18 Fellowships. She will use her $15,000 creative fellowship to support ‘Poster Child’, a series of poster artworks contextualising the experiences of marginalised artists in contemporary Australia.
“I’m studying the political posters in the archives and I will be asking people of colour and first nation people to contribute to creating posters, as part of a collective.”
Eve of Reconstruction will be launched at 6-8pm on Thursday at Footscray Community Arts Centre’s Gabriel Gallery and runs until August 26.
Details: textaqueen.com
