In Their Finery

Firstdraft Gallery, 2020

In Their Finery explores the familial performance of inherited traditions, the temptation of embodying your own exotic, and the politicisation of the chickpea. The works in this exhibition, which have personal starting points, investigate the interlocking of seemingly incongruous constructs while interlacing religious and textile motifs as metaphors for transcultural interplay. Based on photographic and video portraits of the artist and her family, with painted white faces, the staged tableaux engage the viewers in heightened performances of identities. These works were created with the artists’ family on the traditional lands of the Darug and Gundungurra peoples, they pay their respect to their Elders, past, present and emerging.

Exhibition Text

Credits

Shrines created with Aram El Haddad and Yasmeen El Haddad

Videography by Ludwig El Haddad

Photography Credit Jessica Maurer