Re-Configuring the Diasporic and Indigenous in the Art Of Zhou Xiaoping

Abstract

This essay examines the negotiation of the ‘uneasy conversation’ between Indigenous and diasporic identities within the contemporary visual arts in Australia. It focuses on collaborations between Chinese diasporic artist Zhou Xiaoping and Aboriginal artist Jimmy Pike, and situates their relationship within broader debates on the representation of difference in Australian art. Zhou is working within an Australian art discourse grappling with two interconnected issues: a history of colonial representations of Aborigines, and the more recent postmodern artistic practice of the appropriation of Aboriginal imagery. Until recently, both debates that framed the black/white binary have often excluded or negated the possibilities of other cross-cultural representations of difference. This essay investigates how Zhou's art challenges the dominant black/white binary by opening up a range of new questions about the aesthetics, politics and ethics of cross-cultural representations of Aboriginality. The cross-hatching of Chinese diasporic and Indigenous identities in the contemporary visual arts is creating a platform for cultural exchange. Zhou and Pike's joint exhibition Through the Eyes of Two Cultures (1999) is one example of how the contested intersection between Chinese diasporic and Indigenous identities can be mediated by a cross-cultural politics of representation.