© National Portrait Gallery 2024
King Edward Terrace, Parkes
Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia
Phone +61 2 6102 7000
ABN: 54 74 277 1196
National Photographic Portrait Prize 2020 Finalist
This image looks at race-based privilege in Australia, and attempts to re-conceptualise 'blackfacing'. 'Whitefacing' (such as it appears) re-appropriates the act of 'blackfacing', used historically to de-humanise peoples of colour. Simultaneously, the image seeks to highlight that appropriating another’s skin colour pales into insignificance compared to the systematic extermination of traditional lifestyles of people of colour. Colonisation forced the indoctrination of 'whiteness'. Now the subject once again adopts the white mask as a metaphor for the white-washing of non-white cultures. Jack Wilkie-Jans is a Waanyi man from the Gulf of Carpentaria and of the Teppathiggi and Tjungundji tribes from Western Cape York.
The exhibition is selected from a national field of entries, reflecting the distinctive vision of Australia's aspiring and professional portrait photographers and the unique nature of their subjects.
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