Copyright Agency Partnerships’ inaugural commission and exhibition
TextaQueen's Bollywouldn't was commissioned in 2021 as the first in a three-year series run by Copyright Agency Partnerships (CAP), an initiative of the Copyright Agency's Cultural Fund, with leading Australian arts institutions 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (4A), Sydney, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne, and Institute of Modern Art (IMA), Brisbane, designed to support midcareer and established visual artists with an $80,000 artistic commission and solo exhibition opportunity.
For over twenty years, TextaQueen has been known for using the humble fibre-tip marker to draw out complex politics of gender, race, sexuality, and identity in detailed portraiture.
Bollywouldn't, on view at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney NSW 2000, until 18 December, is a balm to the displacement of diaspora, deconstructing the “-isms” in the Bollywood genre and giving agency back to South Asians, particularly those marginalised through sexuality and gender identities. This major commission echoes TextaQueen's enduring practice of connecting with the community using texta as a mechanism to bring people together. The artist's portraits of queer South Asian community have been digitally mapped onto buildings in and around London, creating the illusion that they exist as actual murals on a monumental scale against colonial structures.
In discussing their work, TextaQueen says: “Bollywouldn't is a catch phrase decolon ised; it is an imagining of utopia and reclamation of power. This work is an energetic offering that will inspire us South Asians to think about our relationship with the white gaze, how each of us can anchor in our subtext or prejudice and what we can do to dissolve it.”
TextaQueen recently added, “Dreaming up I was inspired by the connections I made in London during my ACME residency with queer and trans South Asian communities and the forces of disruption and reclamation that are so familiar to anti-colonial movements. Imagining new worlds, asks us questions and offers riddles – the only way to really parlay with power. These narratives are right at home at 4A, and I'm chuffed to be presenting with support from the Copyright Agency Partnerships commission.”
