#ofc there's also the great amount of trauma and self worth issues

[venivivividi]

(and this is Alex’s version [re: previous post] aka why he was so ready to let go)

[aliencrybby]

i have such mixed feelings about art & the art scene.

on one hand i value it and those who contribute to it, believing it’s capacity to contribute to the bigger picture of human experience. on the other hand it’s also built on an ostracising colonial system of worth and value placing.

the grassroots communities of black, brown & asian artists that have been flowering through the cracks was a recent discovery for me. thanks to white centrism, these communities can’t be properly represented or exposed (esp in Australia) so my lil filipino heart leapt to find them (thank you instagram). but like a lot of these artists, i’m privileged by the literal blood, sweat and tears of my parents labour. i’m a lucky little immo kid who got to finish high school and go to university, i got to prioritise my interests, build skills in things i like, and overall dedicate time to trying to figure out what kind of experiences to chase in life. our hardworking parents bore the brunt of cruel, constant and normalised racism on their own, and inadvertently made sure we could access the tools to navigate the shitty colonial world inflicted on us all. in my own life i have conflicts of colourism, classism and poverty inside of my family networks which are intertwined with dv, family violence and financial manipulation to further complicate things. when i moved to australia i was an anxious, daydreaming little book-reading menace navigating this strange new world as a single child/single parent unit. we were flung into a toxic melting pot of early-globalism’s well intentioned but completely ignorant vision of ‘multiculturalism’ that honestly probably caused more traumas in the global consciousness than they fixed.

but that’s a vent for another day. back to these communities of artists of colour.

i recently read a post by @riyahamid addressing the chasm between the spaces these communities are forced to occupy in order to be seen (the greater art scene & culture) vs the real people these stories involve. we as first gen immos or children of immo parents are fortunate to be able to speak our truths. it’s not always easy and ofc there are still plenty attitudinal and systemic barriers for POC to be validated within art communities - but unlike many of our parents & families, we are privileged to be able to try. yet while we get to unburden ourselves & share our stories, people from the communities we come from tend to feel out of place in the spaces our work ends up in. be it stage, gallery, or theatre - these worlds feel alien to them. in the art show i was recently in, my mum came along to drop off my works. while she was super happy for me, she was uncomfortable in the gallery and kept saying she could never even dream of doing what i’m doing (heartbreaking because i can only do what i’m doing because of everything she did and continues to do). a lot of young poc i meet who are working in creative fields often talk about this gap between their art & work and the communities they come from.

ofc this feeling of being barred from these institutions is a class intersect at work. but on top of the common deterrent of class is an issue of colonial value systems which automatically undervalues poc, our personhood and our accomplishments. if i bothered to count the amount of times i’ve said or done something that’s been attributed to a white colleague/friend, i’d be wasting time adding to infinity. add to this that while we may have the social coding to create works that fit in with the premise of these spaces (exclusive spaces we’ve gotten familiar with), our parents/families/communities generally didn’t have the time or privilege to engage with these spaces. they were too busy working ten thousand menial jobs with shit pay and even less social currency, or else doing their lonely thing overseas so they could afford to send us to school to try fit in with the blanket of whiteness the rest of the kids were zealously wearing. there’s also a degree of their constant awareness of how any work accomplished by poc, especially women of colour is undervalued. so while there seems to be emergent space for woc in art, the art scene and its culture is still buried deep in the asshole of colonialism.

disclaimer: this isn’t not a reflection of the show i was in, which was an amazing event by an amazing gal brilliantly exploring important themes. i consider myself nothing less than blessed to have opportunities like the one afforded to me last weekend. if anything, it just goes to show how long the reach of colonialism goes.

so while it’s great to be able to talk about these things with each other, it’s a bitter aftertaste that lingers when you consider how exclusive & ostracising these spaces still are. folk who experience the most pervasive intersections of marginalisation need these spaces of solidarity the most, to unpack complex emotional truths and experiences - yet are the ones who feel most out of place in them. when we talk about diaspora, are we not trying to bridge the gap, not widen it?

the immigrant struggle is so common in western societies - yet continues to be underrepresented or BADLY represented in superficial mainstream attempts to portray our stories. yet the fact remains that western society and its continued centering of whiteness is built on a system that forcibly marginalises certain bodies, while privileging others. it doesn’t help that centuries of this system has conflated success with exploitation, and economic stability with genuine acceptance.

one of the panelists at the event last weekend, mary, talked about her work as a psychologist, saying that formal/colonial based methodologies only further ostracised marginalised youths (shock horror!) - and that it was her arts based therapies that got them engaged. working creatively enabled them to share stories, unpack traumas and offer solidarity to each other.

when the culture of art breeds a pretension and exclusivity that focuses on image and self identity based on colonial value systems (education, class, privilege, the right ratio of irony to earnestness), it means a lot of people can’t partake. when you consider the fact that many pre-colonial cultures revered art and art practice as a meaningful way to communicate their stories, to pass them on, it’s even sadder. something that was natural and inherent got stamped out and recreated in a way that barres them access to it.

as always, it’s the victors (read: oppressors) who get to tell the stories.

‘eco femmo in the city’ prints available here.