Just another brick in the wall? Think again. Interactive art installation, Tapping Identities, occupying Cube 37 at the Frankston Arts Centre provokes thought and invites physical reconstruction as it examines the flexible nature of human identity.
Venezuelan immigrant artist, Ramon Martinez Mendoza wanted to create an artwork that could be intentionally recreated by its audience. Tapping Identities challenges visitors to examine personal identity while considering the internal and external forces working to change it. ‘We have to find a way to be less rigid in our own categorization of humanity,’ he advocates.
With the outside glass cube representing the external and the interior space representing internal identity, Mendoza and artists from Aboriginal artists’ collective, Baluk Arts of Mornington Peninsula (Robert Kelly – Wathaurong; Lisa Waup – Knarn Kolak; Douglas Smith – Wiradjuri; Patsy Smith – Taungurung) built two brick cubes side by side. One cube was made of yellow brick, the other, red. Using these building blocks of societies past and present, the cubes stood for the two distinct cultural identities Indigenous, expatriate and colonised people inhabit within a society. Surrounded by one tonne of red sand suggestive of the Australian outback, everything built was set to change.
Donning leather gloves and rubber boots, volunteers and visitors to the cube have radically restructured the interior space, intermingling the two identities in an exciting and ongoing reconstruction. This is the reality faced by people who find themselves caught between two identities, external and internal, past and present, expatriate and Indigenous, colonised and colonizer, in their struggle to make sense of their own identity during the process of cultural assimilation.
An immensely interesting concept, this installation is also a pleasure to participate in as the process of shifting sands and scraping bricks engages all the senses. Having a hand in creating an art installation is a very different experience to being a passive observer. People change, adapt and assimilate into new cultural environments; Tapping Identities gives a visceral sense of this experience.
Tapping Identities
Ramón Martínez Mendoza and Baluk Arts
Cube 37, Frankston Arts Centre
artscentre.frankston.vic.gov.au
1 – 23 March
