A range of refugee experiences from often-sidelined cultures in the Australian context is on view at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre in Western Sydney, a region where almost half of the population was born overseas cultivating a unique blend of heritage and language. Twenty-two Australian and international artists will exhibit in ‘Refugees’ including Khadim Ali, Frank Auerbach, Christian Boltanski, Yosl Bergner, Judy Cassab, Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, Lucian Freud, Mona Hatoum, Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack, Guo Jian, Anish Kapoor, Inge King, Dinh Q. Le, Nalini Malani, Helmut Newton, Yoko Ono, Aida Tomescu, Danila Vassilieff, Ai Wei Wei, Ah Xian and Anne Zahalka.
Bukhara by Mona Hatoum graces our cover this month. The Palestinian-British artist addresses the feeling of being on the margin, born to parents exiled from Haifa as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. She balances the homeliness of the domestic Persian rug and the zoomed out view of continents styled like the Gall-Peters equal-area map favoured by UNESCO. Together her subject and medium stress a struggle between localism and global identities. Liminality is a key issue in the show. The photo-series ‘Threshold’ by Anne Zahalka captures hallways, passages and doorways in Morocco, though her background is Austrian and Czech, exploring the sensation of being in-between worlds and questioning the visual stereotype of the Arab setting being timeworn and mysterious.
Khadim Ali lives in Doonside in Western Sydney. He migrated to Australia in 2009 on a Distinguished Talent Visa and is one of few artists on the board of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. His people, the Hazara, have been persecuted by the Taliban for decades. In conversation with Art Almanac Ali spoke to the demon iconography so present in his work connected to the mythology of the Shahnameh or Book of Kings.
“The history of modern states is of forced migration and mass murder. In the singular global structure of today, states and national identity are well defined. The refugee lies outside these definitions, outside the nation. Acceptance in society, work, and political and social groups is the pillar in our lives. It is an ontological matter and defines ‘being’. We feel at the margins of human and beast, citizen and alien, and society and wilderness. The refugee is the complete example of a dehumanised and demonised human because they have been exiled to the realm of displacement.”
To promote social inclusion Casula Powerhouse will deliver a series of public programs. Settlement Services International (SSI) and CuriousWorks will show short films by local refugee artists in ‘Beyond Refuge: CITIZENS’.
Casual Powerhouse Arts Centre
Until 11 September, 2016
Sydney
