West Space is delighted to present a new body of work by emerging Mparntwe/Alice Springs-based artist Chris Ng, in partnership with regional spaces Watch This Space (NT) and Situate (TAS).
"Where you from?" is a question often asked in Mparntwe/Alice Springs. It is a colloquial phrase but given the context - spoken on land where local Indigenous cultures and languages are still commonly practiced - it can also hold deep ancestral meaning.
The population of Mparntwe is a melting pot of people, from Central, Eastern and Western Arrernte, Pitintjara, Walpiri and Luritja peoples, to non-Indigenous people "born and bred in Alice", to national and international migrants who have relocated for work opportunities and to escape city life.
Where you from? is born from the artist's experience of living in such a place, as a person of colour and first-generation 'Australian'. It is a project for the culturally ambiguous by the culturally ambiguous, for whom the term ""culturally diverse"" is complex.
Realised across ceramics and installation, Where you from? looks to reimagine cultural identities and histories, to redefine an understanding of multiculturalism in so-called 'Australia' by presenting it in intimate and individual scale.
Where you from? is about voicing the unique insights that people of layered cultural backgrounds have to share, and focussing on the diverse cultures that we know rather than what we have lost.
Image: courtesy of the artist.