Bombshells and Balaclavas

Abstract

The performative media work of Australian artists Abdul Abdullah and Cigdem Aydemir is addressed at the precise rendering of a form of white fantasy about the Islamic Other that also neatly captures the terms of the immigration debate in Australia. Their art works appeal to the possibility of a different encounter between white Australia and immigrants from Islamic cultures, one that is informed by the mediated discourse of white paranoia but not contained within it. Gesturing to more beneficent outcomes while still inhabiting ‘the liminal spaces of inclusion/exclusion’ in Australia with all its attendant ironies.