TextaQueen is awarded the inaugural Copyright Agency Partnerships $80,000 commission with 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art
August 10, 2021
The Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund today announced visual artist TextaQueen as the recipient of the inaugural Copyright Agency Partnerships (CAP) $80,000 commission to develop and exhibit a major body of work with the 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney.
In April this year, the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund announced the launch of the CAP three-year commission series in partnership with leading Australian arts institutions 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (Sydney), the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (Melbourne), and the Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane), to support mid-career and established visual artists with an $80,000 artistic commission and solo exhibition opportunity.
As the inaugural partner organisation in the CAP series, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art will champion the development of TextaQueen’s Bollywouldn’t project, culminating in a significant solo show across two floors of 4A’s Haymarket gallery.
Copyright Agency CEO Adam Suckling says, “We are incredibly excited about CAP and the establishment of this competitive commission that will offer vital mentoring and financial support to artists such as TextaQueen. The commission will afford them the time and space to create, as well as supporting them with appropriate resources to ensure their work is curated and, importantly, exhibited and promoted to Australian audiences.”
TextaQueen says of their award, “Through this commission, my work will be able to reflect on and celebrate queer South Asian diaspora on a literally huge scale. This project has decolonial motivations and being awarded this opportunity with 4A reflects global shifts started by grassroots Black and Indigenous led movements. I’m honoured to have this support to creatively contribute to important conversations happening beyond the arts, and within.”
In discussing their work, TextaQueen says, “Bollywouldn’t is a catchphrase decolonised; it is an imagining of utopia and reclamation of power. This work is an energetic offering that will inspire us South Asians to think about our relationship with the white gaze, how each of us can anchor in our subtext or prejudice and what we can do to dissolve it.”
TextaQueen’s commission will be created as small works on paper of queer and trans South Asians reclaiming the Bollywood movie poster format, based on portrait sessions whilst on residency at ACME, London. These portraits will be projection-mapped onto photographs, to create the illusion that they exist as actual murals that intervene with colonial structures and sites. It will be presented at 4A’s Haymarket, Sydney gallery on an epic scale.
“This idea is influenced by the experience of the pandemic, living life through the simulation of the digital screen as well as anticolonial, abolitionist, and Black Lives Matter movements, and the dethroning of colonial statues and reclaiming of colonial sites. The use of projection mapping and documenting in the gallery expands my practice into murals and contemplates the impact of images outside of institutions,” says TextaQueen.
To create Bollywouldn’t performances, TextaQueen will engage four trans and queer South Asians to interact with the works and projections in the exhibition. The performances will interpret the Bollywood genre in queer and decolonial ways, reclaiming colonial space and asserting identities usually marginalised.
4A’s Artistic Director/CEO Amrit Gill is elated to present TextaQueen’s work.
“TextaQueen’s work is influenced through their lived experience as a person of South Asian heritage, and we’re privileged to be able to support them in the creation of their visionary work through this notable commission,” says Ms Gill. “Our organisation has been a leader in Asian contemporary art in Australia since 1996, and this opportunity with TextaQueen is significant, as their work makes invaluable cultural contributions with comments on broader structural contexts and representations of marginalised identities.”
TextaQueen’s work is held in collections at Artbank Australia, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Patrick Corrigan Collection, Monash University Museum Art, National Gallery of Victoria, University of Queensland, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, and National Portrait Gallery of Australia.
“The CAP commission echoes my constant intentions of connecting with community and using texta as a mechanism to bring people together,” says TextaQueen.
TextaQueen’s Bollywouldn’t exhibition will be shown at the 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art in late 2022. Please see our website for more information on Copyright Agency Partnerships.
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Jane Morey
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About the Copyright Agency and Cultural Fund
The Copyright Agency is an Australian not-for-profit organisation that has been standing up for creators for more than 40 years. We enable the reuse of copyright-protected words and images in return for fair payment to creators.
The Cultural Fund is the philanthropic arm of the Copyright Agency, contributing meaningfully to a wide range of Australian cultural, educational and artistic programs and creators. Through its support it fosters greater understanding and engagement of national culture both locally and internationally.
Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund is a long-time supporter of the Miles Franklin Literary Award, providing $5,000 to each of the finalists and granting more than half a million dollars to this premier Australian literary prize since 2004.
About 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art
4A is an independent not-for-profit organisation based in Sydney, Australia. We foster excellence and innovation in contemporary culture through the commissioning, presentation, documentation and research of contemporary art. Our program is presented throughout Australia and Asia , where we ensure that contemporary art plays a central role in understanding and developing the dynamic relationship between Australia and the wider Asian region.