Witness

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BACKGROUND The artwork is an archival digital print, titled Witness. Set in a panoramic landscape of the Central Victorian goldfields region in Australian, the image includes an Indian man dressed in a quintessential English suit and a photographic lighting prop. The relationship between these three components is inscribed with a red line calling into question their connected meaning and tri-partisan relationship. CONTRIBUTION Reading the space in the work through a post colonial lens, brings into focus Homi Bhabha's discourse on mimicry, authenticity and the right to narrate as a means of revising and reestablishing a sense of national and communal identity in a global world. In this context, the artwork highlights the tenuous and often unresolved space of Australian history in the context of settler and migrant culture (not to mention, indigenous culture). The work plays on the ambiguous and often ambivalent nature of national and cultural identity in the context of power, drawing out sociologist Laymert Garcia dos Santos' compelling question, Who has the right to belong to the future of humanity, and who is condemned to disappear? SIGNIFICANCE The camera equipment in the photograph attempts to capture and document this narrative as indexical truth. As the great black American writer, James Baldwin contended, history is not a thing of the past. It is now. It light of current events relating to right wing politics, fake news, and the debacle surrounding migration and refugees, Witness opens up this space for critical enquiry.