TextaQueen: Bollywouldn’t opens October 22
October 11, 2022
Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund is thrilled to announce the opening of TextaQueen: Bollywouldn’t on October 22 at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art as part of the Copyright Agency Partnerships (CAP) program. CAP is a three-year commissioning series in partnership with leading Australian arts institutions 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (Sydney), the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (Melbourne), and the Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane). It exists to support mid-career and established visual artists with an $80,000 artistic commission to be exhibited with the partner organisations.
In describing their work for the exhibition, TextaQueen says, “Bollywouldn’t is a catchphrase decolonised; it is an imagining of utopia and reclamation of power. This work is an energetic offering that will inspire us South Asians to think about our relationship with the white gaze, how each of us can anchor in our subtext or prejudice and what we can do to dissolve it.”
For over twenty years, TextaQueen has been known for using the humble fibre-tip marker to draw out complex politics of gender, race, sexuality and identity in detailed portraiture. They create in collaborative processes with other diasporic people whilst examining their own existence living on others’ ancestral lands to unweave the impact of cultural and colonial legacies, and the influences of visual and popular culture on personal identity. Beyond works on paper, their practice expands to photography, painting, curating, video, printmaking, performance, self-publishing, writing and murals.
TextaQueen, Kali ka Choti Behen, 2022, india
ink marker, watercolour and coloured pencil
on cotton paper, dimensions variable,
courtesy of the artist.
They are a queer, disabled, non-binary Goan Indian, living on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and Bunurong Boon Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation, in so-called Melbourne, Australia.
TextaQueen’s work has appeared at Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; de Young Museum, San Francisco; Western Exhibitions, Chicago; and Kunsthalle Darmstadt, Germany, and is in collections such as National Gallery of Victoria, University of Queensland, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Monash University of Modern Art, Art Gallery of Western Australia and the National Portrait Gallery of Australia. Residencies include ACME, London, International Studio and Curatorial Program, New York and Queensland Art Gallery. A mid-career survey exhibition toured nationally via Mornington Peninsular Regional Gallery in 2017.
TextaQueen: Bollywouldn’t
22 October 2022 – 18 December 2022
4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art
181-187 Hay St, Haymarket, 2000