Between 1940s and 1960s, Australian legislation prescribed the removal of all indigenous children from their natural parents at birth to be adopted by white families. Among the thousands of aboriginal children who never saw their natural parents again is Tracey Moffatt. The Australian aboriginal photographer and filmmaker was born in 1960 and grew up in her foster family in a working class suburb of Brisbane, Australia. Her particular background has incorporated ethnic and gender elements into her work.
The current Tracey Moffatt exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum marks the first time her works have been shown in Taiwan. On display are four photo series, two films created between 1989 and 1998, and a documentary about her career. They include her short film Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy and her first feature film Bedevil, both of which have participated in the Cannes Film Festival.
PHOTO COURTESY OF TAIPEI FINE ARTS MUSEUM
Moffatt has admitted to being deeply influenced by "trash TV" -- soap operas, talk shows, American horror films and sports programs -- in creating her visual works. But she cited her subconscious as the most important source for her imagery. These scenes from her daydreams lend a surreal quality to her works.
Since the photo series Something More, also on show at TFAM, won her international recognition in 1989, the meticulously set up scenes in the photos and the combination of them to present a story have become her trademark. Her critics have termed her presentation "photodrama."
The photos, set in a small, decrepit wooden house by a desert highway, tell the story of a beautiful woman who tries to escape from her barren life among her many lovers to start a new life in a big city. First bogged down by the lovers' tenaciousness, her attempt finally comes to a tragic end when their possessiveness proves fatal.
The sensuous colors and artificial composition resemble scenes from B-movies of the 1950s. However, these photos are definitely different from film stills. The photographic techniques Moffatt uses mean that each photo is able to stand alone. These images resonate, creating different stories in different people's imaginations.
The Scarred for Life series is composed of nine snapshots, each with its own caption. Their format and style are derived from 1960s editions of Life magazine, although they deal with a less upbeat subject -- the strained relationships between generations and the resulting emotional loss that changes teenagers lives. The combined force of photos and their captions gives life to these slices of teenage life wrought with sexual and familial conflicts and peer pressure.
Inspired by Italian director Pier Paolo Pasoloni, the Up in the Sky series shows the tough existence in the Australian outback through 25 ochre and steel-blue offset prints. The first print shows a white mother holding an Aboriginal baby, unaware of the three menacing nuns approaching her house, who later take away the baby, and continues through a number of episodes that lead to an open ending.
The short film Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy also has an Aboriginal adoptee as its main character. The film depicts the love-hate relationships between an Aboriginal daughter and her elderly white mother.
Although at first glance, most of the exhibits deal with gender or ethnic issues, Moffatt said that she is not trying to make any social comments, but rather finds it natural to place Aborigines in her works.
"I don't intend people to interpret my works from an ethnic or feminist angle, but that doesn't bother me either. Art works should have many readings. I expect to see Taiwanese viewers read into my works something different from Western viewers. That would mean the visual language in them has crossed cultural boundaries," she said.
Art Notes
What: Tracey Moffatt Exhibition
Where: Taipei Fine Arts Museum (台北市立美術館)
When: Until Sept. 23
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless