A SOLO EXHIBITION BY TEXTAQUEEN

In this photographic self-portraiture series created while artist-in-residence at Police Point Shire Park on Boonwurrung country, TextaQueen redresses the ‘nature nude’ and its common form of describing white, feminine fragility. Contemplating connection to a landscape as someone whose ancestry belongs elsewhere, she drapes herself in its ‘fabric’ – the indigenous and invasive plant species, seaweeds and rocky crags becoming ‘nature couture’.

Resisting ethnographic projections onto TextaQueen’s brown-skinned being via allusions to high fashion photography, her soft, scarred and otherwise unkempt body wears unsellable ‘garments’ that only exist in the photographic moment. These temporal costumes suitably meditate on TextaQueen’s transitory contact – and complicated desire to connect – with others’ ancestral land.

TextaQueen invites you to imagine a mythology surrounding these images in which a divine yet earthly entity swims across time and tides from her ancestral lands of Goa, India to find herself on the shores of Boonwurrung country, inspired to enact embodiments of de-colonial emotionality, sexuality, femininity, vulnerability and empowerment.

Opening night: Thursday 9 February, 6:30 - 8:30pm
Artist Floor Talk: Saturday 18 February, 1.30 - 2.30pm

Wheelchair accessible