Description
‘Friends’, says Xiaoping, ‘would ask me how I had developed a relationship with Aboriginal people in such a short period of time. The answer was very simple: I showed respect. What else establishes good and lasting relationships between people?’
Zhou Xiaoping was educated in China and classically trained in the Chinese artistic techniques of sketching and painting. Arriving in Australia in 1988 and keen to explore what lay beyond major metropolitan centres, he travelled with sketchbook and camera to Central Australia.
Further travels included extended stays in the Western Desert and Arnhem Land, where he sought out practitioners of Aboriginal art traditions—among them Jimmy Pike and and Johnny Bulunbulun. Eager to learn from them, he shared in their everyday lives and in opportunities for collaborative art-making and exhibition.
Xiaoping’s artistic creation received enthusiastic approval by Aboriginal people, especially by the subjects and co-creators of such artworks. White cultural gatekeepers have, however, tended to censure his artworks because of what they see as ‘problematic content’.
This baffling contradiction and other interesting insights are explored in Adopted by Country—a most engaging memoir which merits wide attention.
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