DISPLACED
PERSONS
2003
Isle of Refuge, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, College of Fine Arts, UNSW
12 June – 19 July, 2003
UR in EU, Sir Hermann Black Gallery & Sculpture Terrace, UNSW
21 April – 22 May, 2004
16th Tamworth Fibre Textile Biennial: A matter of time, Tamworth City Gallery
November 2004 – 30 January 2005 and regional tour
Australian National Maritime Museum
5 July – 5 November, 2006
… their pieces highlight the motivations for fleeing homelands. Iconic images of heroic soldiers, red star Nazis swastikas lurk menacingly beneath maps of Europe, their borders muddied by long histories of invasion and conquest.
works
overview
In Displaced Persons, the artists explore a shared history, and they use their art to tease out and subvert cultural identities and cliches.
Displaced Persons charts the journeys of two families’ flights from Europe to Australia through the layering of photographs and personal documents from their family archives. The images map the reasons they fled from their homeland and the emotional and physical landscapes they encountered in their search for a new life. Travel and immigration documents, emblematic anti-Semitic and Communist propaganda and nostalgic images of Hungary and Czechoslovakia have been transferred onto twenty handkerchiefs, creating the context of both the physical and psychological journeys undertaken. Images projected onto a large pregnant belly insinuate a sense of prejudice written on the skin, inscribing the notions of racism and suspicion of ‘the other’ both internally and externally, of being born into a certain history by which we are defined.