I have been in Europe for the past two weeks. First I was in Bodø, Norway, for NAISA, which was amazing. The Sámi people are so welcoming. I really enjoyed my time there, learned a lot, and have a newfound appreciation for the north—though I had a hard time adapting to the sun never setting, lol.
Then I was in Venice and was able to visit the Biennale for the first time. It was really overwhelming in a good way. Soooooo much to see, so much to think about. I want to take a few days/weeks to process some of what I saw there, and write a little series about a few works and artists that I thought were interesting.
This is Part 1 of, who knows…a few posts on those things.
Archie Moore’s kith and kin at the Australian Pavilion was stunning. Awe inspiring. Humbling.
Moore is Kamilaroi/Bigambul, from Queensland, and much of his work deals with the themes present in the pavilion: genealogy, Aboriginal deaths in custody, the endurance of culture, the violence of colonialism. The work won the Biennale’s golden lion award for best national participation.
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As I walked in to the square structure, the attendant advised me not to step on the black center portion, which was filled with ink. Apparently, people had been stepping in it, not knowing it would stain their shoes. I think this is curious. People have been getting stained with the material used to document Indigenous disappearance, the tool of settler violence—it marks the bureaucratic maneuver of settlement as a viscous stain.
The walls had been painted with black chalkboard paint, and Moore then drew in white chalk 2,400 generations of his ancestors. These white bubbles include names—known and unknown, proper and at times racist epithets used in official documents—that are connected by a line to the next set of ancestors. This genealogical chart wraps around the entire interior structure. You cannot see it all at once. It even spills onto the ceiling.
In the center there is a large table with reproduced stacks of paper—government records of deaths in custody, inquiries, petitions, etc. It is a record of the theft of a continent. This is the table that is surrounded by a square pool of black ink. The ink on the floor serves as a kind of reservoir of settler violence, the substance that is used to make the legal documents piled and piled and piled in the center.
But the overwhelming effect is the simplicity of the genealogy map that surrounds the structure. The generational span brings Indigenous people into multiple timescales. We exist not as the time of capitalist accumulation, not as modernity, but exceed and have existed well beyond those fleeting inventions. The scale of the work does so much. It positions humans in geological time, as part of the overarching process of planetary movement. It marks resilience and endurance. But it also dwarfs the spectator. To enter this pavilion is to understand oneself not as a singular being, but as the unending endurance of a people.
It takes a while to get used to the light as well. The eyes need time to adjust to the darkness, and then, slowly, the details reveal themselves. A man is simply named: half-caste. Another: Woman. Another: no name. These are the records of the racialization of Aboriginal people—how the body becomes not a body, but a text; not a person, but a statistic, an effect of colonial rule that is not the body itself, but a simulation.
Names and generations. Over millennia. I think the work is not so much an individual expression of art, but an insistence on the humility that comes from knowing that one’s ancestors are always there, always with you. At least for me, when I stood there in awe of what surrounded me, I thought of all the surviving, all the thriving, and all the pain that my ancestors endured for me to exist—to be here writing now, this reminder to give gratitude for them, their names, even if I do not, and can never, know them.
Wonderful review. More more more!
Wonderful !!!
Wopila tanka!