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On Monday I discovered that a photo of myself and my eight-year-old daughter has appeared in the Guardian. This is a first. I work in the arts but our life is private, quietly enclosed.

The photo of us forms part of a gallery of images taken this weekend at one of the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in solidarity with both the American protesters after the recent death of George Floyd and the families of 437 Aboriginal women and men who have died in custody.

As the photos dissolve across the front page they are linked by a common thread: we are black, brown and Indigenous people in Australia at this flashpoint moment demanding an end to violence.

I wonder what people think of this photo of my daughter and me taken by a stranger. How can I claim it and call it my own? I think of the amazing 19th century African American activist Sojourner Truth who sold carte de visite portraits of herself inscribed with the words I sell the Shadow to Support the Substance.

My photo is currency. After all, weve been handpicked out of a crowd of 20,000 to represent the medias image of a global black protest movement.

But what really ties us together, beyond the colour of our skin and the event itself? Representation is everything in this hypervisual world and there are so many ways to be black. What is mine?

This has been a constant interrogation in my own family life growing up in Melbourne. My mixed heritage(s) of African American, Indigenous and Irish/Scottish ancestry has shown up irreconcilable histories that have led to the breakdown of my familys flow.

Unlike being the kid of divorced parents, having a black and white family is a complex set of often unspoken and traumatic conflicts playing out across generations. The forcible removal of my father from his parents in 1940s Carlton defined the tense atmosphere I grew up in.

We are black, brown and Indigenous people in Australia at this flashpoint moment demanding an end to violence

So much of my familys past is simply out of reach. I have recently discovered links to intellectual black cousins in North Carolina, whose pasts are rooted in black chauffeur history. A mystery Ngemba second cousin in Brewarrina and sealer ties to the Palawa community of Cape Barren Island have appeared out of the constellation of my ancestors DNA matter. I wonder what legacy I can best transmit to my daughter, whose fathers own family migrated to Paris from Cameroon in the 1960s.

Difficult conversations about displacement, miscegenation, stolen children, repeating racism and black diasporic expression inform much of my work, including an ongoing history thesis, my curatorial work and my film work. But my most recent collaboration as a member of the curatorial team at this years Biennale of Sydney was the first time I felt deeply connected through art to the specific ability of black, Indigenous and people of colour to creatively transform trauma into a powerful source of hope.

While Im feeling inspired by the momentum of demonstrations and statue-toppling, the biennale (re)opening this week is good news.

Thanks to the truth-telling vision of the biennales Wiradjeri artistic director and artist, Brook Andrew, and the work of the 100 or more local and international artists, we are being offered a means to transform our raw grief and anger of this last fortnight into a longterm reflection. This artistic event can serve as a much needed platform to challenge and inform this countrys current divisive conversations.

In the Art Gallery of New South Wales alone the biennale works of black artists Arthur Jafa, Karla Dickens, Barbara McGrady and the late Kunmanara Mumu Mike Williams (who has been awarded an OA as Im writing) all call out for the proverbial white knee to be removed from our necks.

For me it is Jafas provoking video work The White Album that specifically moves the white privilege conversation forward with his personal sequencing of digital downloads that challenge the flawed hypocrisy of white supremacy and its many nuanced forms denial being one.

This denial seems to be a constant in our governments response to the Black Lives Matter demonstrations and confirms to me just how much we need artists and art (and cinema, photography, performance, music) to make visible the very space that our leaders dont want Australians to see.

Ive been singled out of a crowd of 20,000 protesters calling out for an end to violence against black people. I hope this photo helps you get to know this mother and child a little better. Before I vanish back to my private life I cant help but think of the anti-white-privilege poetry of biennale invitee, the African-Brazilian performance artist Jota Mombaa, whose voice resonates eloquently in my mind right now as I sign off:

We will infiltrate your dreams and upset your balance but its nothing personal.

Greta Morton Elangu is a freelance curator, historian and film-maker who divides her time between Sydney and Paris

Read the original here:
A photo of my daughter and me at a Black Lives Matter march made news. This is my story - The Guardian