Images, Books of my childhood, 2024, RMIT
Books of my childhood
4 x A3 inkjet posters, ipad, cardboard frame.
The books of my childhood comprise at least part of the familial archive I continue to keep in my position. Most of them are somewhere between 50 to 100 years old so they're definitely historical which reminds me that I'm also becoming historical. When I was young, I had no idea how to filter the images and stories that I saw and heard. What I can look at now and see to be overtly racist was not apparent to me as a child and I had nobody there to instruct me otherwise. The instructions were coming from parents and family, teachers, authors, and illustrators but those instructions were pushing a narrative around racial superiority - a justification for the colonisation of indigenous peoples across the world.
Most of this work was created and presented on the land of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Bunurong / Boon Wurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation. I pay respect to their Elders past and present. I acknowledge and honour the unbroken spiritual, cultural and political connection they have maintained to this unique place for more than 2000 generations.
Images and Installation view, Books of my childhood, 2024, RMIT
I decided to focus on the privileged school students of the numerous English boarding schools depicted in these books as the subjects for the posters. I wondered what would happen if we were able to change them, jolt them out of their ignorance and encourage them to think differently? Understanding that, in the same way Simone de Beauvoir states that - “One is not born but rather becomes a woman”,so too people are not born but rather become racist. I wanted to unsettle their white privilege with powerful truths that could not be refuted. I wanted to send a message back to them but in a way, I wanted to send a message back to myself and my family. I wanted to give a name to the discomfort I felt when people around me used overtly racist or sexist or bigoted language.