#blake prize

Cicatrix- SJ Norman

“Norman, a non-binary transmasculine cross-disciplinary artist, said definitions of religion and spirituality were inherently colonial and problematic. The practice of bodily scarification could be variously described as a religious practice, cultural practice, spiritual practice, a knowledge practice, a political practice, or all of the above, he said.

“’For the many Aboriginal people on this continent who still practise scarification, the distinction [between ceremony and art] is completely clear. For myself, as a south-eastern Koori, this work represents a very personal, referential gesture to a practice which has been suppressed, and which colonisation has divested me of,’ Norman told Guardian Australia.

“’This is a work of body art, which is generated from a point of tension between the western canon of performance, which I inhabit and am influenced by, and my Indigeneity,’ he said.”