Las Minions by Nic Fern

Size (cm): 147 x 121
Charcoal, acrylic & oil stick on repurposed curtain.
Using iconic imagery, I transcribe established narratives of the Western visual art canon and place them within a contemporary Australian context. With this work, I have digested and regurgitated notions of oppression found in Diego Velazquez’s 1656 painting titled ‘Las Meninas’, to address the way I feel living within a colonised country. With figures that don the attire of the first European officials who seized the inhabited land of First Nations people, ‘Las Minions’ questions how, in a democratic society, marginalisation and a sense of powerlessness still exist.