{"id":12388,"date":"2018-09-23T08:30:19","date_gmt":"2018-09-22T22:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress-711166-2356953.cloudwaysapps.com\/?p=12388"},"modified":"2018-09-28T10:17:33","modified_gmt":"2018-09-28T00:17:33","slug":"a-politics-of-skin-using-art-as-intervention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peril.com.au\/back-editions\/skin-in-the-game\/a-politics-of-skin-using-art-as-intervention\/","title":{"rendered":"A Politics of Skin: Using Art as Intervention"},"content":{"rendered":"
If the function of skin is to protect us, why does it often lead to hurt, shame, discrimination and pain?<\/span><\/p>\n Skin is a layer we cannot take off, and something that I am reminded of everyday. When I was younger I was embarrassed of my brown skin, I would constantly reframe my brownness as a \u2018nice\u2019 hue of caramel. Reflecting on this, I realised I wanted to be a safe shade or a better sounding kind of brown. My skin has often forced me to <\/span>do<\/span><\/i> something, to take on racial conversations and to help others think about race in more productive ways. This responsibility, while tiring at times, has opened up the possibilities in thinking about the politics of skin. It has become the layer of myself that I no longer try to hide, but rather use as an opportunity to talk about social inequalities.<\/span><\/p>\n Skin can be an investment: allowing the potential for an intervention, whilst also posing a stake in terms of making visible and taking action against persistent and systemic discrimination. There have been many before me who have given us ways to talk about race and the importance in its constructions and lived realities. I am deeply indebted to activist and intellectual figures such as Audre Lorde, bell hooks and Stuart Hall who have carved out spaces in thinking seriously and politically about race. They not only opened up the academy, but also creative spaces. But in centring the need for racial dialogues, they also faced hardships. This remains in the social fabric today. As Lorde reminds us in <\/span>Sister Outsider<\/span><\/i>, \u201cit is the responsibility of the oppressed to teac<\/span>h the oppressors their mistakes…Black and Third World people are expected to educate white people as to our humanity\u201d. In the Australian context, where simmering racial tensions continue to reinforce a white, settler-colonial nationalism, political artworks might play a role in drawing to our attention certain social inequalities, and often, this falls on the marginalised who have no choice but to be political.<\/p>\n I know not everyone would agree that art should or<\/span> needs <\/span><\/i>to be political and this is a fair point to make. But artworks that address social inequalities activate more than a response:\u00a0<\/span>art speaks to different groups of people, and makes visible \u2013 through creative intervention \u2013 a space to talk back, with and for. Art that functions as political protest and social activism is useful in relaying more than critique, it offers a way to change social conditions from the visual world. When art is used to attract attention, it can draw us to worlds and experiences we may never have known. Coming from outside of the art world, I am drawn to artists and artworks that make an intervention.<\/p>\n Sydney-based artist Jason W<\/span>ing, seeks to push past the simplistic, and at times reductionist notion of racial identity as singular. Wing reflects on his Aboriginal and Chinese heritage as a community-driven artist. What is interesting about Wing is how he views the world from different experiences and lenses, stating, \u201cThere are always layers in my work\u201d<\/a>. These cultural layers he refers to take shape in how he comes to his artist practice. Many of his pieces, exhibitions and community-based projects such as In Between Two Worlds<\/i> (2012); Australian was Stolen by Armed Robbery<\/i> (2012); and >>Brute Force>>Merge Sort<\/i> (2017) think about the role and politics of race and ethnicity.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cArt speaks to different groups of people, and makes visible \u2013 through creative intervention \u2013 a sp<\/b>ace to talk back,\u00a0<\/b>with and for.\u201d<\/b><\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n