Bidjara artist Christian Thompson’s work explores themes of identity, cultural hybridity and history, often through his own image and lived experience. He explains:
I use contemporary art as a way to archive and practise my culture and speak my language, and do it in a way . . . that’s really connected to my contemporary experience.
Refuge 2015 celebrates the beauty and lyricism of Thompson’s father’s once-extinct Bidjara language. Purposefully untranslated, the work is about kinship and connectedness, brotherhood and humanity, and finding refuge in those connections.