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Jenny Fraser

Enemy 2008

Digital Photograph

Artist Statement

In Noumea they have a government intervention that bans the purchase of alcohol all weekend. Unlike the Australian Intervention, alcohol is not just restricted for Indigenous Kanaky only – but everyone on the island.
However, it seemed that Police presence was increased for some, more than others...
I took photos of the Police harassing Kanaky
Kanaky brothers posed well : )

Then the Police harassed me
... Apparently it is "forbidden" to take photos of the New Caledonian Police!
I hid my camera until the Police left and a friend had showed them hers instead.


I asked the Kanaky brothers why the Police were hassling them?
The one English word they used to describe the Police attitude toward Kanaky was
Enemy
It reminded me of the documentary ‘Intervention’ that I had seen just months before...


... The one English word the brother in the Australian Central Desert used to describe the Police attitude toward Aranda was


Enemy

 

Bio

Jenny Fraser is a "Digital Native" working within a fluid screen-based practice. Her work is regularly exhibited and screened internationally, including ISEA/Zero1 in San Jose and the Interactiva Biennales in Mexico.  She has completed a Masters in Indigenous Wellbeing and is a celebrated artist, recently receiving an honourable mention at the 2007 imagineNATIVE Film & Media Arts Festival in Toronto.

Because of the diverse creative mediums Jenny uses, much of her work defies categorisation. More recently her work takes iconic and everyday symbols of Australian life and places them into a context that questions the values they represent. With a laconic sense of humour she picks away at the fabric of our society, exposing contradictions, absurdities, and denial.

Jenny is interested in refining the art of artist/curating as an act of sovereignty and emancipation. She is a spearhead for Aboriginal Media Arts, founding cyberTribe online Gallery in 1999 and the Blackout Collective in 2002. More recently she was the first Aboriginal Curator to present a Triennial exhibition in Australia: ‘the other APT’ (2006) coinciding and responding to the Asia Pacific Triennial which was then accepted for inclusion into the 2008 Biennale of Sydney and toured to the Center Cultural Tjibaou in Noumea, New Caledonia.

A Murri, she was born in Mareeba, Far North Queensland in 1971 and her old people originally hailed from Yugambeh Country in the Gold Coast Hinterland on the South East Queensland / Northern New South Wales border.

http://www.cybertribe.culture2.org/jennyfraser