My people, the Pakana (the Tasmanian Aboriginal people), have endured attempted genocide, murder, rape and persecution. We have campaigned for two centuries, to be treated with dignity, have our identity recognised, have rights and a voice, for land returns, and heritage protection, amongst other things.
We have endured being researched, measured, sampled, grave robbed and studied against our express wishes.
On Saturday March 20, edgy Tasmanian winter arts festival Dark Mofo put out a call for the blood of First Nations people from territories ‘colonised’ by the British. They had commissioned an artist to soak the Union Jack flag (aka the Butchers Apron) in the blood and display it.
The call was met with outrage.
Three days later the controversial proposal was withdrawn and apologies issued by Dark Mofo director Leigh Carmichael and MONA founder David Walsh.
The artist, Spaniard, Santiago Sierra, said the project is against colonialism and was calling for 470 ml (almost two cups) of blood from each First Nations donor.
That amount of blood is the same amount taken when you donate at the Australian Red Cross Lifeblood. Currently, 31,000 donations are needed every week across Australia to help patients in times of trauma, major surgery, cancer treatment, pregnancy and a host of other situations. One in three Australians will need donated blood in their lifetime. (You can find out more or book a spot here to make a life-saving donation.)
Sierra said his planned ‘art’ was “‘an acknowledgement of the pain and destruction colonialism has caused First Nations peoples, devastating entire cultures and civilisations”’. Sierra correctly pointed out that First Nations people of Australia suffered enormously and brutally from British colonialism, and nowhere more so than in Tasmania.
While there was little dispute that truth telling is urgently needed, the overwhelming response from the Pakana and other First Nations people was that “enough of our blood had been spilt”. The festival was also criticised for not consulting with First Nations people on the project.
However stalwart Tasmanian Aboriginal activist and lawyer Michael Mansell has defended the ‘art’ work. “The purpose of art is to evoke emotion, contribute to and sometimes drive a debate,” says Mansell. He believes “that the artist was very successful in this instance”.
The blood-soaked flag was to be part of 2021’s Dark Mofo festival, by the ever-expanding and influential MONA (Museum of Old and New Art). The museum, in suburban Hobart, opened in 2011 and is owned by millionaire gambler Tasmanian David Walsh.
MONA and its annual festivals have prided themselves in controversial, fetishised and bloodthirsty offerings. In 2017, a Dark Mofo live performance featured nudity, classical music and people frolicking inside the guts of a freshly slaughtered bull.
Just as the bull gut diving produced few conversations about the ethics of factory farming and eating other sentient beings, so far it seems the proposed blood soaking of the Union Jack has produced few conversations of the ongoing injustices, discrimination and environmental, social and cultural destruction caused by colonisation.
It is not the first time the festival has drawn the ire of the pakana. MONA is built atop an Aboriginal heritage site. In 2014, a group of Pakana running a fibre workshop as part of their festival, were unaware that they were actually part of an installation by another European artist, which included, hidden from their view, a stand purporting to test the DNA of Aboriginal people. The installation was pulled mid festival. Walsh issued an online apology for having “pissed some people off”.
Neither is this the first time Sierra has personified cultural taunting or dismissed the human rights of others – he built a gas chamber in a former synagogue in Germany and has sloppily tattooed drug-addicted sex workers.
It is very un-MONA-esque to pull a controversial artwork before it has begun, however, if the intent of the private institution was a publicity stunt it has well and truly succeeded. With that being said, it’s the connections with my community, one whose land their institution stands on, that is most at stake.
Several First Nations artists and arts industry leaders including James Tylor, Jam Graham-Blair, Reko Rennie, Kimberley Moulton, Tony Albert, Ali Gumillya Baker, Brook Andrew, Hayley Millar Baker, Dean Cross, Amala Groom, Myles Russel-Cook, Jessica Clark, Jazz Money, Jenna Mayilema Lee, Tony Casey (Blaklash Creative), Amanda Hayman (Blaklash Creative) have pledged to boycott MONA until they lift their game, calling for a meaningful apology, training for the owner, directors and all their staff in cultural awareness, fund more Pakana artwork and employing First Nations curators.
It might not get as much publicity though.
Jillian Mundy is a Pakana woman from Nipaluna (Hobart), Lutruwita (Tasmania). She is a freelance writer, photographer, consultant and emerging filmmaker. Before freelancing Jillian worked in community organisations, the hospitality and retail industries, and for the Victorian and Tasmanian governments, including in Aboriginal heritage for 14 years. She has been published by the Koori Mail National Indigenous newspaper since 2005 and her work has taken her around Australia.