Melbourne-based South Sudanese artist upturns the dehumanising lens of Eurocentric art history with her joyous and vivid work
A new $80,000 art prize for Australian women has been awarded to a former refugee whose work – exploding in colour – is a response to colonial oppression.
Atem’s joyous, subversive self-portraits employ riotous cosmetic and costume devices to deliver a visually pleasurable – and intellectually uncomfortable – punch., whose mesmerising 2018 portrait of Iranian Kurdish refugee Behrouz Boochani turned him into a potent symbol of the Australian government’s asylum seeker policy.
adorned the living room walls of millions of white middle-class homes in the mid-20th century, exploiting the exoticism of “oriental” and African sensuality.Photograph: Courtesy of the artist and Mars Gallery