Statement 2019
Transcription of the statement for the 21st Biennial
In my creative process, I am intrigued by the way history is “remembered”. In my last body of work, I have examined how the dominant colonial culture has chosen to memorialize particular historic events through stories, dialogues and documents of said events, in order to justify their repression of the indigenous culture. The two sculpted columns, which are Monuments to the Properties of Peace and Evil, are responses to two obelisks that were erected in a town in Aotearoa, New Zealand to commemorate what on one side is described as a “battle” and on the other the killing of innocent people. By recreating in a gallery, the original memorials that have since been destroyed, it gives the audience a chance to revisit this history.
The two wooden columns are made of wooden slats to speak of the fragility of the side of the story which has been lost by history. The dominant discourse is that the people who were killed were actually the aggressors, and occupied a fortified position that needed to be subdued—in actual fact they were in a domestic, open wooden dwelling that was vulnerable to attack. The wooden slats on the works are arranged in a “v” and inverted “v” format, a reference to indigenous iconography which alludes to the two responses humanity is faced with when confronted by difference, to either embrace or repel, hence the “properties of peace or evil”.
When it comes to offer a different space to review history, art gives indigenous voices an opportunity to offer “alter-native” perspectives of it, whether by subverting dominant meta-narratives or simply by the act of remembering histories that have been conveniently forgotten. This is because they contradict the dominant culture’s own foundation mythologies and often question the legitimacy of their occupation. In Aotearoa, New Zealand, the dominant culture, have forgotten that they too have been perpetuators of violence. Such an amnesia has led to the denial that acts of extreme violence at the hands of the white majority, such as the recent Christchurch Mosque killings, are even possible.