Sometimes even I forget that my original drawings are really quite big. Many people who have had my postcards, posters, etc on their walls for decades, who have expressed what my art has meant to them, haven’t seen any in the flesh.

What I’ve valued most about having a survey show has been witnessing the emotionally stirred reactions from friends and other people for whom I make my art, in front of the original work, and the messages I’ve received about this experience from strangers. I’ve been repeatedly reminded that I create art for the people who witness some part of themselves in it (sometimes directly as subjects), for others who have rarely seen these representations framed in empowerment, especially in these privileged spaces.

These people aren’t usually the ones who have been able to buy my original work – this happened more often during the fourteen years that I (mainly) drew white feminist-identified women and only a couple of times since I’ve focused on representing racialised bodies – statistics reflecting the impacts of structural realities on people’s wallets.

Experiences over this last year have pushed me to further reflect on how structural power dynamics impact the institutional palatability of non-intersectional white feminist art versus the relative rarity in institutional representation of work that is featuring – and created by – racialised, melaninated bodies expressing empowerment in femme and feminist identity, and the lesser commercial value of this less represented work.

Also reflecting on my work’s (subversive?) vehicles of palatability in institutional and commercial contexts, such as humour and medium, and my palatability via privileges that aid my access to these contexts, including via the above language that is inaccessible to many others.

#betweenyouandme #textaqueen #nonwhitefeminism #access #institutionalpalatability #whitefeminism #brownbodies #whitewalls #modelminority

#Repost @tweedregionalgallery
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Visitors are loving spending time examining the works in @textaqueen’s exhibition ‘Between You and Me’. Visit the Gallery this summer and see this wonderful exhibition for yourself, until 25 February 2018. (at Tweed Regional Gallery & Margaret Olley Art Centre)