WA Indigenous Art Award: Megan Cope's The Blaktism questions authenticity obsession.
Dylan Rainforth. The Sydney Morning Herald. July 5, 2015.
Melbourne artist Megan Cope has won the prestigious 2015 Western Australian Indigenous Art Award, worth $50,000. "I'm really excited because, by selecting The Blaktism, the curators have set a precedent and taken a bit of a risk," Cope says of her overtly political work.
"I'm really pleased I've won, of course. I've never won an art award, ever."
Cope has been in Perth, where the award was presented on Friday night. Eunice Yunurupa Porter won the Western Australian artist category.
Cope's The Blaktism, is a seven-minute video featuring the artist, a self-described "fair-skinned" Aborigine, being anointed in a mock political-religious ceremony to authenticate her ethnicity. Originally created for Melbourne festival Next Wave, Cope says the work arose from questions she had when asked to submit a certificate of Aboriginality, a statutory declaration made by Indigenous elders, in order to secure an overseas residency.
The award's judges said Cope's work offered "theatrical and humorous insight" into a "contemporary reality for Indigenous Australians … The video is laden with familiar but deeply fraught symbology associated with the state, the church and nationalistic jingoism."
Cope describes The Blaktism as "a political statement about Australia's obsession with authenticity" and the continued denial of Aboriginal people's right to express themselves.
But expression and authenticity aren't an individual project, as highlighted in the recent case of an American woman, Rachel Dolezal, who purported to be African-American.
"What I find the most important aspect of that issue is that her parents called her out on that," Cope says. She points out she is "claimed" by an extended family network that effectively authenticates who she is. "So it's kind of weird for me … white privilege is so out of control that here's this woman who thinks it's her right to be black."
Whereas other artists might use the prize money to hunker down in the studio or travel, Cope won't quit her day job just yet. Instead, she has bold plans to invest in an Indigenous-owned oyster farm, which would be the only one of its kind on her traditional homeland of Stradbroke Island in Queensland. "I just think it's really important we invest in our own food supply as Aboriginal people."
Cope has paintings featured in two group exhibitions opening in Melbourne this week, Lost in Translocation at RMIT Project Space and War at the Wyndham Art Gallery. The Blaktism can be seen at Cope's representative gallery This Is No Fantasy + Dianne Tanzer Gallery until early August.