Disrupting the Silence: Australian Aboriginal Art as a Political Act

Abstract

Making art is a political act, and it has become the vehicle where my voice is loudest. Aboriginal nations in Australia have undergone all manner of colonial violence, including being hunted, shot, burned, poisoned, and massacred, to list a few. This is a history that has been hidden and deliberately denied in Australian educational curricula. Its ripple-out effect means the vast majority of the population are ignorant of what took place in this country. I make art to disrupt those silences and engage in Australian history. Through focusing on three works in my oeuvre-Black Opium (2006), Bone Boxes (2003), and Hunted III (2021)-I can make sense of the colonial project. The ground covered here encompasses an invented language, museum collections, tourism, history, and patriarchal violence.