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SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA: Earlier this month Ethiopian-born, Melbourne-based artist Atong Atem became the first recipient of the La Prairie Art Award, an $80,000 accolade which champions the work of Australian female artists. Presented by the Art Gallery Of New South Wales and Swiss luxury skincare house La Prairie, the gong couldn’t have been awarded to a more humble, determined young woman.
As we speak to Atem on the phone post her win, she’s still on a high; elated, grateful, “incredibly touched”. The award itself – and the grant money – aims to nurture the recipient’s practice and increase their international profile. For the young artist, she plans to kickstart a bout of international travel to, as she puts it, “open up her world again”. It’s this sense of wanderlust combined with a curious mind that has seen Atem captivate viewers. Her body of work, A Yellow Dress, A Bouquet, is a five-part sequential self-portrait series of photographs where Atem’s face is painted brightly; amethyst, cobalt blue, scarlet red. This, in conjunction with the hyper-stylised costuming, carries a political message, one which symbolises aesthetic alienation and society’s connotations with skin colour.
“I am enormously proud to win an award dedicated to contemporary Australian women artists, especially knowing how many remarkable women artists there are working in Australia today,” Atem says. “I am thrilled to have this major work acquired by the Art Gallery and I would like to thank La Prairie for the opportunity to create avenues for my career internationally.”
In June, Atem will travel to Zurich in Switzerland to attend the esteemed Art Basel international art fair as a VIP guest with La Prairie. Read ahead for some words from the young artist. And if you’re in Sydney, Atem’s work will be on display inside the Art Gallery Of New South Wales until Sunday May 22.
GRAZIA: Tell me about A Yellow Dress, A Bouquet. What inspired this series of subversive portraits?
ATONG ATEM: It’s a series of five self-portraits; a suite I suppose, but it’s technically one work. As the award is so big and so international, I wanted to present the true core of my practice as an artist and the true core of my practice as a photographic artist specifically. I referenced the things that I love to think about and talk about when I’m making work: the history of photography; the history of representation; my interest in sort of figuring out ways that I can showcase the people I photograph, in this case, myself. Ultimately, for me, it’s about showcasing my celebration of colour and texture while also showcasing my specific way of celebrating people.
GRAZIA: Why do you think portraiture is particularly moving to tell stories about migrants?
I think for so long migrants and people who are historically oppressed have been presented by other people. As a South Sudanese person, historically our stories have been presented by colonial powers; people in positions of power, and people who are not South Sudanese.
ATEM: There is so much power in photography and it has in the past – and still to this date – been used in really horrible, negative ways. So I’m drawn to the power that I can wield as a photographer who wants to represent and present myself and my community. That’s still, unfortunately, a very rare thing.
GRAZIA: Can you talk us through your process of creating this series of work?
ATEM: The work took a while. It took two hours just to do the face painting and it took a few hours to do the props, dress the set and then capture the photos. It was a lot of trial and error, but I find it quite meditative. I don’t really plan anything. I collect fabrics, costumes, outfits and props and I just sort of give myself permission to play. So it’s hard to really talk about the process without trying to describe how a person plays. It’s like when you watch a kindergarten-er doing face painting or finger painting, they’re just drawn to certain things. And if you allow yourself to accept what you’re drawn to without judgment, then that’s the process, that’s my process.
GRAZIA: What does your space look like? Do you have music on?
ATEM: I listen to podcasts and I listen to music. Usually podcasts, because I tend to gravitate towards overstimulating myself. That’s when I feel most kind of relaxed and calm.
GRAZIA: That’s a juxtaposition!
ATEM: Yeah. I mean, even right now, while we’re talking on the phone, I have you on speaker and I’m playing little word games on my phone. It’s just something that I’ve noticed about myself and it made it hard in the past because I used to try to create silence and quiet spaces in order to concentrate. And then I would just completely not be able to concentrate! So I usually have a podcast on and I love to learn. I’m just constantly absorbing information.
GRAZIA: Can you tell us a little bit about your use of face paint?
ATEM: I studied painting. Digital photography can often feel really removed. Through painting, I’ve put some effort into reconnecting with the tangibility of my work and that feeling that I’m creating something from scratch – it feels like my hand is on it in some ways. I also can’t help but think about what it means to me to either showcase my skin or not showcase my skin or change it or draw it. I feel like I’m drawing attention to my skin, which is incredibly beautiful and completely neutral to me because I’m surrounded by people with skin colour like mine. And I’m surrounded by people who I have that same relationship to being ostracised and othered. But there’s a lot that’s being said in the choice to paint my face and only have little snippets of my true skin colour coming through on a couple of centimetres of my neck visible, or my eyeballs or whatever.
GRAZIA: What do you remember about the experience of coming to Australia as a six-year-old refugee?
A lot of my experience in this country has been one of reckoning with this othering.
ATEM: This is all I’ve known really. My family overseas, they just see me as an Australian girl, I grew up here. It’s a pretty mixed experience in that way. But that being said, I had such and still do have such a strong connection with my South Sudanese culture. My parents are very, very intelligent. They’re very into research, they know a lot about the culture. I’ve never been lacking in my exposure and understanding of my culture. It’s always just been a matter of other people determining for me who and what I can and can’t be based on their own preconceived notions, and based on their own relationship to migration. I’ve always found it really interesting because as a South Sudanese person, my relationship to my heritage, isn’t about where I was born. I wasn’t born in South Sudan, I was born in Ethiopia. I have never lived in South Sudan, but I’ve always known that I’m a South Sudanese person. Being surrounded by other migrants, like British and European migrants who were born here and have this claim to Australia, is odd. It’s this sort of inability to reckon with the fact that most people are here as settlers because of colonialism and there’s a refusal to acknowledge that. And I was forced to be; that wasn’t extended to me. My sister was born here and that still wasn’t extended to her. I always felt really confused by concepts of who’s a migrant and who is an expat and all that sort of stuff. There’s just some language around movement and borders.
GRAZIA: What will you do with the $80,000 prize money?
ATEM: I am going to travel and I’m honestly just going to try and spend as much of the money opening my world again. During the last few years, we’ve all been so small in our worldview because we can’t leave our houses and our neighbourhoods. So I’m just going to take the opportunity, even though there is a travel scholarship built into it, I’m just going to push it and push it. I want to go to South Sudan. I want to go to South America. After this year’s travel to Switzerland [for Art Basel], I’m probably going to start really travelling again.
The Art Gallery Of NSW will display Atong Atem’s La Prairie Art Award 2022 winning work A Yellow Dress, A Bouquet from Tuesday 15 March to Sunday 22 May 2022.
