r e a
Born 1962
Gamilaraay, Wailwan, Biripi, Australia
Lives and works in Darug and Gundungurra (Blue Mountains), Australia
Artspace
GARI (language), 2024
116 Posters
Commissioned by Biennale of Sydney and Artspace, in collaboration with r e a to create a safe space for reflection. Courtesy the artist
GARI (language), 2024
Textile Banners
Commissioned by Biennale of Sydney and Artspace, in collaboration with r e a to create a safe space for reflection. Courtesy the artist
In March 1987 a poster began appearing on the streets of New York City. All black, bar a single pink triangle, it read SILENCE = DEATH. Aware that their own increasingly urgent conversations regarding the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic were not reflected in broader discourse the Silence=Death Collective, led by Avram Finkelstein, had created one of the most iconic slogans of activist history.
In the wake of the 2023 Voice referendum, queer Gamilaraay/Wailwan/Biripi artist r e a has taken Finkelstein’s poster as inspiration to parallel the underlying politics that align both queer and blak bodies. On the exterior of The Gunnery building, r e a’s large banners depict the words for sun in the Gamilaraay, Wailwan and Biripi languages of the artist’s parents and grandparents. The work continues inside Artspace in the Ideas Platform, here interjected by SILENCE = DEATH and LAND = RIGHTS layering dual messages for audiences to decipher.
r e a has positioned blak, queer power as unavoidable and immutable as the rise and fall of the sun, the light at the end of tunnel.
The text on the Banners and walls translates as ‘sun’ in three languages:
YARAAY: Gamilaraay
DHUNI : Wailwan
TOONAU: Biripi
The text around the sun on the floor translates in Gamilaraay:
bunbul: meeting place
guurrama-li: resist, stand strong
burranba-li: cause a change
The Ideas Platform is supported by Andrew Cameron AM and Cathy Cameron
The Banner Series is supported by Andrew Cameron AM and Cathy Cameron
r e a (they/them) is from the Gamilaraay/Wailwan and Biripi peoples of NSW, they currently live and work in the Blue Mountains. r e a is an experimental interdisciplinary artist / curator / activist / researcher/ cultural educator and creative thinker. Their creative practise-led research extends over three decades, their art often focuses on unveiling the silence of the colonial archive. Their creative research extends into the reclamation and reframing of the bla(c)k queer body, as they re-story Indigeneity and bla(c)kness!
Their extensive research includes the examination of contemporary discourses, which as yet have not changed the colonial narrative of Aboriginality. r e a’s work is centred in the visual arts and located in experimental digital technologies that intentionally, disrupt and disturb a history of silence. Their art consciously draws on a legacy of lived experiences, ancestral knowledge and the impact of intergenerational trauma, grief and loss. ‘My art is the practice of reclamation; a disruption of the colonial gaze through re-storying the blak-body as a point of protest.’
Read more about the 24th Biennale of Sydney, Ten Thousand Suns, by purchasing the catalogue here.