Mii Omaa Ayaad exhibition
The Parramatta Artists Studios presents an exhibition entitled Mii Omaa Ayaad at the occasion of Scott Benesiinaabandan’s Residency. Scott is a member of the Lac Seul First Nation of Anishinaabe language, he is involved both artistically and politically with his community. During his stay in Australia, he spent few months with Aboriginal artists at Geraldton, Western Australia. This exposition is mainly composed with works produced after this experience.
One of these works is made up of a film and paintings. Part of the film captured the images of women artist painting dots on a map. Their regular dots cover a reproduction of an eighteenth century map of the Australia.
In this work, Scott reveals the Australian history’s contradiction between the first denial of Aboriginal existence during the 18th and 19th century and the world-known contemporary Aboriginal painting serving the Australia at the end of the 20th century. Indeed, the first discovers of the Australia declared the land, “Terra Nullius” even they had encountered the first inhabitants. These two Latin words became the stepping-stone of the Australian colonialism and justify all the crimes committed against native people and their cultures. It is a strange historical coincidence, if it is coincidental, that the “dot fever” started at Papunya, a station created to force Aboriginal people to leave their tradition and settle like European.
But, why a Native Canadian artist would work on this Australian historical problem? It is because the Autochthonous artists share the same social and political problems about the land. The borrowing of the motto of the colonialism has been a great challenge for the renaissance of the Fourth World culture; moreover in the Pacific area where local populations have also suffered from misappropriation of their own culture. The other interest of this exhibition is to remind us that Aboriginal paintings stay a native product within a colonial environment.
More info:
Mii Omaa Ayaad exhibition:from 12 April to 8 June 2012
Parramatta Artists Studios
45 Hunter Street – Parramatta – Australia