Blakbird (series) 2009
C-type digital print on pearl paper
H 279 mm x W 356 mm
This work is part of the on-going Blakbird (series) 2009. This series investigates the artist’s family history as Pacific Islanders who were blackbirded; that is forcibly taken by means of trickery and kidnapping, from their island homes in the New Hebrides, now called Vanuatu, to be transported as slave property to Queensland to begin and maintain the sugar plantations for the exploitation of colonial Australia.
Between 1863 and 1906, some 60,000 Pacific Islanders from Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, the Loyalty Islands of New Caledonia and other western Pacific island nations were ‘blackbirded’, that is forcibly taken by means of trickery and kidnapping, from their island homes to be transported as slave property to Queensland to begin and maintain the sugar plantations for the exploitation of colonial Australia.
Krishna’s maternal ancestors were ‘blackbirded’ from their island homes of Vanualava, Mota Lava and Tanna Islands in New Hebrides, now called Vanuatu and taken to Bowen and Ayr to work.
Through the investigation of South Sea Islander collective memory, psyche, perspective and identity Krishna’s work challenges the authority, authenticity, ethics and subjectivity of colonial Australia’s tangible and non-tangible historical and academic interpretations of this discriminatory experience forced on South Sea Islanders by colonial Australia.
Krishna often uses text, multimedia, photography, textiles, bold colour and ephemeral materials; states and matters used to interpret South Sea Islander Diaspora experiences of colonization, transience, flux, displacement, slavery, collective memory and psyche, Melanesian cultural heritage, hybridism, repatriation and empowerment.
Krishna Nahow-Ryall holds a Bachelor of Arts in Visual Art from the Australian National University.
