What Aboriginal Acrylics may offer, unlike most recent art, is precisely their potential to make us nervous. (Baume cited in Myers 1991:48)
The processes and results of cultural recontextualization are disturbing in many ways. Though there is no other way to understand outside of our boundaries of understanding, each time we remove a culture from the contexts which infuse it with meaning and give it life, we risk losing, adding and in some way altering significant dimensions of cultural thought. It is also disturbing if the power distribution is unequal between cultures. Within dominant culture, the power is already distributed, the systems and practices are uncollapsable and the institutions are impenetrable by strange thought. When a marginal culture enters into this realm, this culture risks losing its distinction in the powers of domination. Unevenly distributed power is what adds to the predicament of Aboriginal culture's recontextualization in Western spaces.
I started out the paper questioning the ways in which recontextualization could lead to Aboriginal empowerment verses their continued domination. It is clear that marginal cultures will always be recontextualized under the terms of a dominant culture. Aboriginal culture and their paintings have come into the Western world with the terms already set, the boundaries of meaning already defined. In order to be recognized, the Aborigines have gradually changed their art and entered into the market system of commodification. Within Western standards, Aboriginals have no authority. There are numerous good reasons why the recontextualization of Aboriginal acrylic paintings could be a form of neocolonialism, ethnocide, misrepresentation and exploitation.
To be sure, Aboriginal culture is at stake. For one, there are many risks when using culture as a commodity. The meanings and connections to paintings fall out of Aboriginal hands. In order to be sustainable as commodities, Aboriginal paintings must continue to retain the sense of authenticity and Otherness, but commodity production contradicts these two qualities. In addition, although the materiality of the paintings have already been changed due to white suggestions for easier marketing, other elements of the paintings must continue to change to retain their appeal and popularity on the market. Economically and culturally, Aboriginal paintings may be unsustainable.
Once the paintings make their way into the world, on the walls of galleries and art museums, reproduced on t-shirts, postcards and in books, Aborigines lose power over the representation of their culture. Within Western context, there is a mixture of representing the painting as purely art or emphasizing its Otherness. The nation of Australia has appropriated the Aboriginal identity to stand for the country, even after years of ignoring Aboriginal culture. Economically, there is the potential for Aboriginal culture to be exploited. Aboriginals may be losing their culture identity and uniqueness by allowing Western constructs to manipulate the products of their culture. Aboriginality, as it enters our culture, is a creation.
Fig. 23
Yam
and Bush Tomato Dreaming on Yuedumn school door by Cookie
Japaljarri Stewart,
1983, acrylic on metal door (in Sutton, 1988:99). Aboriginal
painting is used for Aboriginal purposes, too. "We painted
these Dreamings on a school door because the children shouls
learn about our law" (Benjamin, 1990:75).
Yet, there
is another side to this. Power exists in everything, but in the
argument above, Aboriginals are denied all power. Although we can
never ignore the imposing aspects of Western civilization that
misconstrue and distort all other cultures, we cannot deny Australian
Aboriginals the power that comes from being who they
are.
By appropriating Western concepts into their tradition, Aborigines are penetrating into Western institutions, discourse and society. They are refusing to be marginal, denying their invisibility. Though not visible blatant, the acrylic paintings act as a political voice, a symbol of Aboriginal ties and rights to their stolen land. Even though the paintings are made to enter a market, Aboriginals are still creating them in terms that are meaningful to their culture (see Fig. 23). The symbols and "extensions beyond materiality" have not changed for Aboriginals. They are using the tools of their domination in order to create a distinctive identity within a world that has shoved them to the margins of society. Acrylic paintings are also a way to provide for Aboriginal self-determination. No longer do Aborigines have to rely only on welfare payments or work in places they are treated unfairly. Using their culture as a resource has also strengthened cultural beliefs, reinstilling them in permanent reproductions of past. Australian society has finally recognized Aboriginal achievement, even though they have a long way to go in resolving the wrongs of the past. Australian Aboriginals are more than mere observers of their fate.
This paper is all about how we arrange Aboriginal perception within our own limited structures of knowledge. The West gives paintings a new way of being known, but at the same time never allows the paintings to act in a way that would challenge Western thought. We inscribes layers of meaning not intended by the artist, dominating over the ways in which Others think. Though I acknowledge the ways that Western thought has manipulated, transformed and modified any differences that challenge the roots on which it is founded, I cannot accept that recontextualization has stripped Aboriginal culture and their paintings of the power and knowledge inscribed within. As I said in the beginning, to judge this situation as a case of either/or (either beneficial or detrimental) to Aboriginal culture, is in one sense, to ignore the pervasive hegemony of the West, or on the other side, to deny the power of being marginal, of being Aboriginal.
Fig. 24
From
Dreamtime 2 Machinetime by Trevor
Nickolls,
1979, acrylic on canvas. "My painting is a marriage of
Aboriginal culture and Western culture...from Dreamtime to
Machinetime" (in Isaacs, 1989b:77).
It seems to
come down to this. The Aboriginal acrylic paintings are working
within two different worlds. Though they have been encased by the
boundaries of Western thought, the paintings still exist outside of
it in Aboriginal cosmology. Aboriginal culture has not let go of the
meaning, or the space that the painting occupies within their
cultural knowledge. The paintings continue to play an active role in
keeping the stories sacred, passing down histories, and representing
Aboriginal culture. Even though in order to enter Western discourse
the materials have been altered, and the meaning has been made
relative to Western ways of knowing, the paintings will never be
wholly known, never wholly dominated by the West. They are a hybrid
of new and old, with both Aboriginal and Western sources. Both
cultures have incorporated a new knowledge into old routines of
knowing.
Yet, neither world can fully understand this hybrid. Just as we cannot fully conceptualize the Aboriginal world view, they cannot fully understand ours, yet the paintings inhabit (and are given meaning in) both worlds of knowing. In this way, neither world can fully posses and contain the paintings within their cultural boundaries. "They are in limbo between two homes, sharing their function and sense of belonging with both, but not fully explicable in either's language" (Rubinstein 1989:47). The paintings exist within two realms of knowledge but can be owned by neither. The Aborigines now use this new medium to carry on sacred stories and traditions. We use this new concept to incorporate into our sacred institutions. As long as the paintings remain sacred to both worlds, power will exist in both.
This is the power that the paintings contain, the power to exist between worlds. Susan Leigh Star talks about the power found within the high tension zone or the point of zero. This is the space of being undefined, between two boundaries of knowing. She writes about a transsexual who inhabits both the worlds of male and female but is not fully defined by either. Categorizing is a way to control, to limit the space bodies inhabit: "they want me to be one thing or another" (Star 1991:45). The controversy over defining and representing the Aboriginal acrylic paintings is because they are made partially by a world we can never know. The acrylic paintings have two sources, yet don't fully belong in either Western institutions or in Aboriginal ceremonies. There is power in being a member in more than one world.
People inhabit many different domains at once, as well, and the negotiation of identities, within and across groups, is an extraordinary complex and delicate task. It's important not to presume either unity or single membership, either in the mingling of humans and nonhumans or amongst humans. Marginality is a powerful experience (Star 1991: 52).
Within these two worlds, Aboriginal paintings hold a sacredness, fulfilling and upholding a part of each belief system. They continue to reinforce Aboriginal past knowledge and meaning, in the same way that the paintings maintain our definition of art within our sacred institutions.
Susan Leigh Star says "Power is about whose metaphor brings worlds together" (1991:52). With Aboriginal acrylic paintings the power is shared by both Aboriginal and Western worlds. The paintings embody more than one voice. It is the power of not being defined with a certainty, with a totality. There is power contained in these paintings but it is a power that develops in both worlds. We both use this new hybrid as a way to reinforce our cultural beliefs. Pieces from each, the paintings are a construction from the collision of two cultures. In both Aboriginal and Western culture, the acrylic paintings have a power that cannot be stolen by the other, because neither one can understand fully, the power held within the other culture.