Who’s Afraid?: Emilie Syme-Lamont & Safak Gurboga
12 May 2023 - 9 July 2023
Curator:
Artist: Emilie Syme-Lamont, Safak Gurboga
Artists:
Location: Boadle Hall
Who's Afraid? brings together two artists, Safak Gurboga and Emilie Syme-Lamont to explore themes of displacement, fear, and cultural structures.
Safak’s work, The Big Bad Wolf and 1938 draws on the artist's personal experiences of displacement and Kurdish diaspora, referencing a specific event of Kurdish massacre in Türkiye in the late 1930s. The oversized depiction of the wolf serves to reclaim ownership over the monster and to speak to wider implications of crimes against humanity.
Emilie’s work, Revelations similarly uses animal motifs to explore post-colonialism, displacement, and the Gothic within the context of Australia. Her large white deer painting is a shapeshifter, both vulnerable and uninvited, and her use of museological display methods responds to scientific, religious and historical transgressions
Together, these two bodies of work create a dialogue about the cultural, political, and personal impact of displacement and fear.