Shadow play, projection and performance combine to question our history and shift the colonial gaze in Ali Gumillya Baker’s mixed media video installation.
“This is a violent black tragedy, a cathartic melodrama. Dressed in a tall ship hat pretending to be a colonialist, the Mirning artist writes with her feather quill back to the colonial-mother-monarch of her times ‘down among the wild men’. From the shade of the gum tree. At the same time as her chronicling, she is attacked by a wild man, (fellow sovereign Yanyuwa artist), who with a super large fork pretend stabs her in the back and the pretend explorer/tall ship coloniser collapses. Even the trees are scared of us blackfellas the hand holding the tree is shaking in fear. The background soundtrack that the viewer cannot hear is us all laughing maniacally at the re-enactment of the anthropological and colonial gaze.” - Ali Gumillya Baker
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Collection
In ACMI's collection
On display until
16 February 2031
ACMI: Gallery 1
Credits
Collection metadata
ACMI Identifier
Subject category
Digital Art
Curatorial sections
The Story of the Moving Image → Moving Pictures → MI-01. Light and Shadow → MI-01-AV03
The Story of the Moving Image → Moving Pictures → MI-01. Light and Shadow → MI-01-C01
Object Types
Artwork
Materials
Video loop, artist and Michael Bonner (performer)