Praxis Artspace | Booth J02
Damien Shen
Damien Shen is a South Australian man of Ngarrindjeri and Chinese descent. As an artist, he draws on these cultural influences to create works of intense personal meaning, as seen in works such as A message from God to the Blackfellow, 2017, which is part of an evolving series where Shen draws on the encounters between the Ngarrindjeri people and Reverend George Taplin who positioned Shen’s ancestors as inferior black subjects. “The series initially took the form of large portraits, depicting two of his great grandparents . . . submerged underneath a sheath of pale rhythmic dotting, ghosted in the virtues of whiteness while their selfhood was simultaneously erased by ‘well-meaning’ messengers of God,” wrote Glenn Iseger-Pilkington. Here, Shen depicts the missionaries alongside a single, confronting image of his great-grandfather, deepening the injustice felt by this imbalance of power.