Title: Fluent in Venice: Curating Australian Aboriginal art beyond the ‘urban/desert’ paradigm
Abstract: Historically, the (re)presentation of Aboriginal art both in Australia and internationally was typically structured by the opposition ‘urban’ versus ‘desert’ art, where the desert signified nature and timelessness, and the city culture, progress and history. A sustained collective effort by cultural practitioners exposed the deep colonialist roots of this opposition. Most commentators now agree that it limits engagement with the practices of Aboriginal artists, and few employ it anymore. As a paradigm, however, it reveals much about constructions of the colonial city. This essay examines how one contemporary art exhibition worked to challenge and transcend this paradigm. Australia's entry at the 47th Venice Biennale (1997), fluent, was co-curated by Brenda L. Croft, Hetti Perkins and Victoria Lynn. It featured the work of three Aboriginal women artists from different language groups, who each continued the artistic practices of her culture: Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Yvonne Koolmatrie and Judy Watson. By focusing on the curators as cultural producers, and closely reading the archival traces of their practice, this essay examines how the exhibition's framework met the city of Venice, and enabled it to make an intervention into the art historical time and space of Aboriginal art, and the Venice Biennale as an institution.
Publication Year: 2015
Publication Date: 2015-02-20
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 1
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