Balla, Paola ORCID: 0000-0002-1321-1363 (2018) Work to be done, across Australia, Artists are Disrupting the Country’s Colonial Mindset : How is contemporary Aboriginal art challenging an exclusive historical canon? Frieze: contemporary art and culture (199). pp. 142-146. ISSN 0962-0672

Abstract

This article is an overview of Aboriginal artists and non Aboriginal artists in Australia, both white & non white settlers who grapple with the de-colonial, anti-colonial, or even non-colonial within their work. The dialogue around whether we are "post-colonial" is challenged through looking at a number of Aboriginal & non Aboriginal artists work & those politically astute Aboriginal activists and scholars who speak of the ongoing colonial project. This also addresses dialogue & writing that speak of us being post-colonial in contemporary Australia which sometimes leaks into art writing & research in Australia. The article overviews those who collaborate with Aboriginal artists in projects, exhibitions and public programming that engage with de-colonizing methodologies. It also mentions artists who are critically self aware of their standpoints as settlers who are also Indigenous, but displaced for various reasons. Their art making and resulting works are expressions of making sense of their place on un-ceded stolen lands of Aboriginal Peoples in Australia as a settler state, or ongoing colonial project. Almost all of them work from a place of this country not being post colonial at all, and create spaces of contestation, resistance and also an attempt to make peace with settling on unresolved lands, or as we know it as Aboriginal Peoples, as Country. The article looks at some of the key points in presenting how and why the de-colonial work of artists is so critical to make visible to an international readership and audience. The article names several current Aboriginal artists & their work and the movement of Aboriginal art and how prolific it is, and particularly the past twenty years. It's significance & contribution to the Australian narrative about historical truths and lived experiences of Aboriginal artists who resist and disrupt the colonial project. This includes Aboriginal women artists who are leading the way regarding de-colonial and anti-colonial work. These women especially speak about Aboriginal matriarchy as their driving force and philosophy and their criticisms of patriarchy and white feminisms.

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