Through the Frosted Glass and Confusion

Anonymous

CONTENT WARNING

CONTAINs GRAphIC WORdING

I remember going on a holiday. Went to Rotto with my mum and a family friend of ours We camped because we didn’t have enough money for the houses Rented bikes and shitty food kept us happy

The only other time we went away was to Sydney Mum couldn’t get out of bed for a couple days But we made our own fun

I remember going back home to our Homeswest house in Gosnells I remember the cobwebs in the corners I remember the sirens I ignore them now My girlfriend says it’s a problem But I say it’s just me

I lived in Homeswest places almost all my life. I remember taking whatever scraps we were given and cobbling together a home I remember getting my first job and having to pay the power bill, or our energy would be shut off I remember the late nights Finishing by 9:30 Home by 10:00 Asleep by 11:00 Awake by 6:00 At school by 8:30

I remember being exhausted I remember feeling like every breath was an effort I remember fighting

My heritage? My dad died when I was fourteen, and all I thought about was if we were still going to the cinema that day My mum was a struggling addict who tried as she might to keep my world together like a perpetual explosion, she never could stop all the shrapnel

My heritage? Outsiders Shopping at Salvos cause we didn’t have enough money to go anywhere else Using public transport to get everywhere cause fuel was too expensive Stressing every single night that we might be homeless tomorrow You ask about my fucking heritage? You really want to know? My fucking heritage is people making fun of me for only owning one school shirt cause we couldn’t afford any more My fucking heritage is attending four funerals by the age of eighteen My fucking heritage is seeing the bloodstain from my dead uncle soaked into the carpet and having to clean out his apartment cause we didn’t have enough money to pay for cleaners My heritage is seeing my childhood clawed from bloodied hands off of me

My legacy though? My legacy? My mother spent the last two decades making sure my sister and I wouldn’t end up with a life like hers So, my legacy will be killing the gods that made my world this way My legacy will be standing atop a mountain of bones and blood with the forgotten, the poor, the outsiders, the exhausted and the tired Our legacy will be making a new city out of their flesh and making sure no one will have to starve as we did

Not out of anger Though we have a lot of it Out of love for each other Out of the love my mother had for me Out of the love my father was never there to give me We will survive We will build a better future Or we will die trying What else is there?

Missing Pieces

Art Theft and Erasure of Culture

Emma Horak

Throughout history, art theft has remained a lucrative human practice from the attempts to erase Indigenous culture during colonisation to the encouraged looting of art during World Wars. Reports and articles dictating the activity have consistently been met with collective cultural uproar and grief. The idea that a piece, which may have never been viewed personally, could be lost by the public eye forever has always raised simultaneous outcry and fascination. From the stealing of widely cherished Van Goghs and Rembrandts, which are held behind laser beam alarms and several locked doors; to family portraits and chinaware taken from the top drawer, it appears that art has a consistent target on its back.

In 1995, the International Foundation for Art Research conducted a report which found that stolen art carried a collective price of between $2.7 and $8.1 billion. However, the public furore over looted art has always gone past the piece’s dollar value; it appears that the practice strikes a nerve far beyond the confines of our back pocket.

The great Aristotle once proclaimed that...

As well as functioning for the purpose of aesthetic and expression, art’s importance in

the aim of art is not to represent the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

documenting and retaining cultural practice is invaluable.

For so many societies, artwork has remained an integral tool for not only continuing cultural practices and norms in everyday life but also for embedding the values and belief systems that lie at their culture’s core; from cooking practices and patriotic song to religion and virtues, art provides a significant insight into our knowledge of history and society, and therefore ourselves.

In my own experience as a woman of DutchIndo descent, I have always been fascinated by the history of both cultures, as well the third liminal space (borne by an understandably tumultuous clash between the two due to Dutch colonisation) that I seem to inherit. In recent years, I have realised that the main driving force for provoking and fostering my understanding of my heritage has been art, a medium that has single-handedly transcended past language barriers and knowledge lost through civil and international war.

When I expressed this to my Oma, her sentiment was the same. Her only material reminders of her grandparents lie in a small silver bowl and portrait of the two of them that still remain in her possession. During the Japanese occupation of Indonesia during the Second World War, all residents of Dutch descent were taken prisoner and placed in camps, their homes ransacked, and personal belongings stripped. A key detail my Oma mentions is her own grandmother

Artwork by Pauline Wong

desperately burying all of the family’s most prized items and art pieces in her garden after hearing of the occupation, and being taken with only the clothes on her back and jewellery hidden away to trade for food. Most upsetting for her grandmother upon her return home was finding her garden dug up and only her portrait and bowl remaining. Beyond the loss of her prized possessions and art pieces was a significant loss of physical and inheritable knowledge of our family’s history.

The looting of art unfortunately remains a universal process of cultural erasure that far surpasses my own family’s experience. However, with the swell of public fury over stolen pieces, there has fortunately been an equal driving force to recover them, driven by members of society both within and beyond the art world. Lawyers, organisations, and members of the public have established valuable databases, reporting systems, and operations for this purpose, with huge success. A notable victory has been the recovery of art stolen during Nazi occupation in World War II. Despite attempts to remove Jewish artwork, among other exhibitions of cultural expression to make way for Nazi ideology, hundreds of thousands of pieces have since been recovered, helping to re-establish a link to history and culture that was so brutally stolen.

This sentiment should extend past art pieces of perceived societal value and worth, such as Picasso’s and Raphaels. If there is a chance that that lost art remains just out of sight, perhaps storage units and garage sales would be an appropriate avenue for equal public consideration. They say that one picture is worth a thousand words- how many sagas and histories does one piece of art hold?