I'm Aboriginal (Bundjalung) on my mum’s side so this artwork relates to that. It’s a fusion of Japanese and Aboriginal art styles and symbolism. It was made with alcohol markers and watercolour paint on canvas.
The dancing animals are either foxes or numbats, they're both, the ambiguity is deliberate, both animals are important to me. The ambiguity of whether the five-petaled symbols are cherry blossoms or gathering places, is also deliberate - they're both.
The artwork is about how I won't ever have access to the complete worldview that my Ancestors had, to the most meaningful parts of their religious and philosophical traditions, because too much has been destroyed by genocide; but how the core spirit, the immaterial living connection to my Ancestors, is still alive and vibrant within me.
And how, while I cannot reconstruct what came before, I am doing my best to carefully construct my own new worldview from the raw materials of culture around me, most especially the religious and philosophical traditions of China and Japan, in such a way that it feels like ‘home’.
While whatever I build cannot ever be as rich with knowledge as tens of thousands of years of oral history, not even close, it can still be just good enough to keep the connection just alive enough, that I don't feel separated from my own self.
Despite that sounding grim and serious, the artwork itself is very much not, it is full of life and joy. It is meant to show that my connection to Country is not fading or barely holding on, it is thriving and overflowing with life. It is a vibrant source of strength, peace and flourishing.
Details
Published:
1 week, 3 days ago
25 Sep 2026 04:51 CEST
Initial: be59d60c646c56505bcaa8682eed586b
Full Size: cc02b25c9140e3320b541b2319e8f0bc
Large: 3c19a58f5cb7e3a60bca0b5abcec5711
Small: 6e4596ffe056d0be0e610ba639aa4da3
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