Personal, Political, Public

Reflections on Difference, Diversity and Representation in the Era of the Global Contemporary

The following is a brief preview - the full content of this page is available to premium users only.
Click here to subscribe...

The foregrounding of identity in contemporary cultural production has long been evident, however there is an increasing tempo to these developments within contemporary art, intertwined with a toxic politico-media culture worldwide. This essay attempts a snapshot view, from an Australian perspective, of how the exhibitionary complex is responding, and of the globalised socio-political landscape in which such art is produced and received. This includes art which emerges, not just from a personal creative impulse, but also from the collective, and the intersections between individual subjectivity and group agency within the public sphere. This art is almost always figurative, and if not, is by its very nature engaged with the human condition. It encompasses the art of political resistance; of Indigenous self-determination; of feminism, ‘masculinities’ and gender diversity; of biopolitics and sexuality; of masquerade and personal mythologies; of the neurodivergent and the self-taught; of displacement and forced migration; of trauma, witnessing and forgotten histories.

Work being made in this expansive space is largely medium-agnostic, and it is a glaring category error (often made) to describe such work as an artistic genre, or even as a mode of practice. The reductive tag of ‘identity art’ has usually been attached (by the art establishment) to contemporary practitioners from outside of Northern/Western art circuits—initially Latin America, Africa and South Asia—but increasingly to any artist whose practice foregrounds their identification with a social minority, which of course varies from place to place depending on demographics. However, progressive thinkers acknowledge that most artists (like people in general) live and work at the intersection of multiple identities, which may be shifting, contingent, emergent. Alongside highly visible signifiers such as race, gender, ethnicity, religious attire or ability-divergence, there... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline

Destiny Deacon and Virginia Fraser, Something in the air, 2016; Brook Andrew, The weight of history, the mark of time (sphere), 2015; installation view, Sovereignty, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne. Photograph Andrew Curtis.

Tracey Moffatt, Indian from the series Passage, 2016. Digital C-print on gloss paper, 102 × 153cm. Edition of 6 + 2 A/Ps. Image ©/Courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney and Tyler Rollins Fine Art, New York.