Refugee Art Project is proud to announce its collaboration with international artists Libia Castro and Olafur Olaffson on the artwork Bosbolobosboco in the upcoming 19th Biennale of Sydney.
The late entry of Bosbolobosboco #6 (Departure–Transit–Arrival) to the Biennale represents the collective action undertaken by a number of artists, including Libia Castro and Olafur Olaffson, to boycott against the Biennale’s involvement with Transfield, a major sponsor of the Biennale and service provider of the Manus Island and Nauru detention centres.
Libia and Olafur, whose works challenge issues of national identity, refugees, migrant guest-workers and globalisation, contacted Refugee Art Project through the Biennale about a possible collaboration with refugees from Australia after being invited to exhibit.
Bosbolobosboco #5
Refugee Art Project has long held concerns about Transfield’s involvement in the Biennale. After discussion with our refugee participants and the artists in Sydney, we supported a letter signed by 28 artists invited to the Biennale (including Libia and Olafur) asking the organisation’s board members to sever their ties with Transfield.
We interpreted the Biennale Board’s initial dismissal of artists’ concerns as an abnegation of their ethical responsibilities as a leading cultural festival in Australia. A collective decision by the artists and Refugee Art Project was made to create the artwork but to withdrawn from the Biennale as part of the boycott.
As we felt it important for artists who join the boycott to still have a voice in the public debate about refugee rights, we arranged to exhibit the work at an alternative venue. We also encouraged artists who chose to remain within the Biennale to use the exposure and media attention it brings to highlight the problem of the Biennale receiving sponsorship from a company that profits from the mandatory detention of asylum seekers.
Then, quite unexpectedly, the boycott worked. On 7 March, Luca Belgiorno-Nettis, a CEO of Transfield Holdings, resigned from the Biennale Board, signalling a cut between the art festival and its long term sponsor.
This issue is close to our hearts. We are a not-for-profit grass roots arts organisation that stands for the human rights and freedom of expression of refugees in Australia. We work to facilitate the art and self-expression of refugees and asylum seekers in detention, who have little access to the channels of communication that would give them a public voice. We involve refugees and asylum seekers in all of our activities and have seen first-hand the physical and psychological damage that mandatory detention inflicts.
The passing of Ahmad Ali Jafari from a heart attack within the Villawood detention centre last year affected us deeply. He was a regular presence in our art classes and a friend who we miss dearly. We have witnessed the mental health crisis inside Australian detention centres and seek to raise awareness on this issue. We believe art can play an important role in deepening thought and challenging popular misconceptions, to educate the Australian community and resist the insidious dehumanisation of asylum seekers in the public discourse.
Bosbolobosboco #6 (Departure–Transit–Arrival) has been a pleasure to make. It is a biomorphic sculpture which resembles a living entity, comprised seemingly of skin or bone. It contains a sound element, featuring the voices of refugees re-visualising specific memories in dialogue with a psychologst, and with reference to certain points of their departure, transit and arrival to Australia. We collaborated with a wonderful psychologist, Nina Melksham, who has assisted with the processes of memorisation and visualisation that the work entails. The piece belongs to a series of relational sculptures under the same title, which offers the audience a new type of engagement with the refugee issue.
Bosbolobosboco #6 (Departure–Transit–Arrival) is the only entry in the Biennale that involves refugees who have come to Australia and deals directly with the subject of their mandatory and indefinite detention. We believe it will give a profound insight into the experiences of asylum seekers in this country.
We are aware that the success of this recent boycott and the Biennale severing ties with Transfield does not go far enough in addressing the issue of profit-making corporations receiving contracts from the Australian Government to administer inhumane facilities for asylum seekers and refugees.
However, it does show that artists and members of the public can effect change, to work against the dismaying chain of human rights abuses our government commits against asylum seekers and refugees. We therefore support the actions of artists and the public to boycott and divest from companies that profit from the detention industry. This begins by reducing the symbolic capital of Transfield and other companies that gain from mandatory detention.
We are thrilled to have played a small role in ending the partnership between the Biennale and Transfield. You can see our sculpture on Cockatoo Island!
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