Vernon Ah Kee: Not an animal or a plant

Walking through Vernon Ah Kee’s current exhibition at the National art school gallery, I was reminded of the theorist Fred Moten’s work with black optimism. The abjection of blackness pre-empts, undergirds and allows for modern America. But black life persists even in colonial violence, in conditions of social death.

Ah Kee declares as much in the exhibition’s title, Not an animal or a plant, and it shows through in his emotionally rich, large scale portraits. In the series Fantasies of the Good we see resting portraits, yet in Hallmark of the Hungry we see a bound and empty figure, and in Brutalities we see rage.

Ah Kee highlights the distinctly Australian expression of racism in Waltzing Matilda, a text based piece that collages racial slurs, slogans and reference to racist mob violence with ‘Waltzing Matilda’, the distinct paean to anglo-Australian heritage. But Ah Kee’s works invite one to think globally.

In one piece, Born in this Skin, slurs against Aboriginal Australians sit next to praise for South African Apartheid, with one piece of graffiti directly linking the White Australia Policy to Apartheid with the conjunction “and”. Next to each other, one has to confront the internationalism of anti-black racism. As protests against mass incarceration and police brutality have lit like wildfire across the US, the take-away question here, I think, is: what are the conditions of domestic and international solidarity against racism? (ZS)

Until Mar 11, 11am-5pm. National Art School Sydney, Forbes Street, Sydney. FREE. Info: www.nas.edu.au

BY ZEIYA SPEEDE