Women’s Art Prize Tasmania, shortlisted March 2020,

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Assimilation draws on the artist’s personal experiences to examine the types of microagressions that can act as a driving force to assimilate people of colour and culture into mainstream Australia.
 

This piece illuminates a formative experience in the artist’s life – being bullied at school for having dark hair on the sides of her face, like many of the other women in her family but unlike any of the other Australian kids at school. Assimilation isolates a point in the artist’s personal history which exemplifies the erasure of points of difference and the overwhelming pressure to fit in.

 

The use of a blue Payne’s grey with gold leafing is a colour palette which is repeated in the body of work that this piece belongs in – riffing on colours that echo the Australian flag. This palette references the intent of this work to reframe concepts of identity and belonging in contemporary Australia.