VANTAGE MAGAZINE

VANTAGE

welcome to MAGAZINE

Vantage Magazine’s first issue is most simply put, a body of work. It is a personal anthology that captures the unfoldings of the past two years through an interweaving of creative mediums.

My name is Indigo Yeldham and as the founder and editor of Vantage, I have used this first issue to find my own voice in publishing. In order to expand this magazine as I envisage: a blending of international vantage points and creative contributions into one forum that captures the reader’s eye; I first had to go on my own individual journey.

And so, while this issue is an individual portfolio, I continue to develop relationships with international contributors who will pioneer the next stage of the magazine alongside myself as we step into the new edition.

Editing

By Indigo Yeldham

What’s a Word Worth?

The first word I remember speaking aloud was spider. I was equally as intrigued by nature as a child as I was with the words used to describe it. My backyard stretched into a national park and in my imagination I was its lone explorer, navigating under a gigantic Australian sky. I walked within the seemingly endless bushland of the Kuring-gai natives with a silver tape recorder clipped onto my belt buckle, always conscious that I may need to clap my hands together as a sign to the snakes in the tall grass or the sting rays laying in the mudflats. When I reached the bay below my home, I would start to dodge oyster shards so I could find the water beyond the mangroves, and I would swim.

This sense of solitude evaporates as I remember the clench of my father’s hand on mine as he towered above me quietly, allowing my fantasy of braving nature alone to live through me. His lesson for me was to not fear nature. If I could be amongst it and respect it, by being alert and present it would let me feel a part of it. “Be aware of the path and the creatures who you may come across that call it home just like you.” he would say. Even the domestic spiders in my bedroom corners would get a name, “oh, don’t worry about Stanley!”. I had a fascination with the long and exotic names of the local plant life. My father, a landscape painter taught me their names, syllable by syllable.

Gre-vill-ia A-cai-cia Bank-si-a

I attached the syllables together as I looked at their spikey shapes which help them to live through drought and bush fire. Their waxy and unlikely vibrant petal displays seemed almost brighter in defiance of the hardships passed through.

Words that were bigger than me could be intimidating, especially when you wanted to keep them in your head forever. I relied on a Lloyds tape recorder to hold them for me. It was my aid until I could retain both the shapes and colours of their forms and how they married to the sounds of the syllables that represented them, in name only. I stored the tape recorder as my father began to speak of the local flora with greater nuance and I could write myself. He described the Angophora costata, a sensual fleshy native tree with roots anchored down into clay cracks between sandstone boulders. Years later I would think of the Angophora as I looked at Matisse’s danc ers in Europe, their meandering shapes, muted colours and movement resonating with an image of home and my father’s own canvases. Words started to matter more when they collided with memories and images, bending words into sentences like dancers as I became a writer. Transfixed by the poets whose words made me feel as if the earth shifted under my feet, reassigning meaning and cracking chrysalis’ in time for the butterfly’s release. The worth of words used became consuming. How do words differ depending on the speaker, the environment, the deadline, the psychological mindset, the capacity to love and distort time? ‘What’s a word worth?’ I wonder, should it arise before the mind decides it should be no more? If the crafter doesn’t know what love is like? Should

Should it arise before the mind de cides it should be no more?

To put pen to paper freely.

To write as if there is no boundary and sing a new song.

To let the pen lead and the mind follow so that it may not be a hindrance on free expression but an aid to exploration. The mind can often stop us in our quest it ruminates for perfection.

But there is power in the pen that glides without restraint as best to mirror the truth of ob servation, the freedom of our will and our capacity to take up space in this world with more words than we assume we are entitled to.

After all, who is to decide in this moment of free fall

that I feel approaching when nothing is rational but all is real.

You don’t leap until you can tell the mind to be quiet as the bird does not fly until it feels physically the might to do so. The mind cannot dictate the initiation of newness, the body is often the facilitator of novelty the mind follows. It attempts to rationalise, securing its place in the sequence.

But let us never neglect the moment of free flight when our mind is yet to match pace with our bod ies so that it can fear our descent. This is the moment of our potential. The nothingness between the flight and the ratio nale of descent.

I write this with my mind docked as best as possible mid-flight.

What is a word worth should it come before the mind decides it should be no more? Who would know as she presses backspace? The mind jumps forwards fearing descent as the flight surrenders.

Words are not real, are not pure until they come during the flight, their worth fades.

It seems that when the mind sleeps, the soul awakens and the language we have is no longer as inert, it sees deeply before the mind encroaches to divert our gaze from the reality we have before us and the true fruits of our unalloyed home.

If the crafter doesn’t know what love is like?

There’s only so long a heart can wonder what it’s like to love before it tires of the wondering, becomes impatient, critically self-reflective. Validation, affirmation, reassurance.

A silent stare could hold the weight of a forgotten tomorrow. A kiss, lungs expand, inhale.

Eyes close, heart stretches to accommodate a deeper but more fragile breath, tomorrow fades.

Seeking to gain clarity that we can’t give to ourselves, a second self to complement the faults of our individ uality.

A leopard who can’t find its prey for nourishment also finds himself questioning his worth. Though per haps the fault does not lie with the leopard – perhaps the landscape hides its nourishing fruits from those

who desire them the most and allow the longing to overcome them.

But how can we terminate a consuming lust, tell it to be no longer.

Push it to the side and just pretend it is no more while it sits in our peripheral and we can’t help but alter our gaze towards it, adapting again to a minorly reformed version of our desires. It never seems to go away.

“It sits at the corner of my eye but in the centre of my gaze.”

Would my words hold more weight, more gravitas if I knew how to love deeply?

how to be loved, knew what it felt like, where to search for it and what to look for?

You can’t call a dog home if you don’t know its name.

Do words implanted in a chasm of love mirror the world more closely, shine a light to its splendour and relish in it? Or are those in love blind to life’s reality? Does the light of love blind rather than illuminate like sun trickling in between the gaps of tree leaves? Does love glaze over the iris, caking it in a sweet capacity to ameliorate rather than to see things as they are?

Does the worth of a word shift, the breaking of a chrysalis, when the crafter of the words knows how to love, how to be loved?

Should it come when we are slow and observant, free of pressure?

Now that I think about it, my parents have always stayed in the left lane, avoiding the rush.

Life is slow –Intentionally.

We have simply chosen to enhance its speed through our normative social and economic flows.

Pace is rhythmic and the essence of time is volatile and intricately determined by our own conception, our own choice –the subtlety of the way we view and interact with our surroundings.

We all have the same time in a day, this is one of the universal elements we all share. I with you, and you with a distant foreigner.

We write to “save ourselves from disintegration”, or at least Zadie Smith does.

If we write more slowly, more consciously, less to meet a deadline, we encourage a new pace and en hance the sensuality of our observations.

Zadie writes of an internal clock that “pays no mind to the time of the world” , and in stead determines pace for itself. The time we take to construct our linguistic compositions, to articulate the patchwork of one’s own intellect is valuable.

Perhaps as significant as speed is to a sprinter. Writers too require speed to enhance the worth of their words, but instead of trying to go faster, the emphasis is on bending time, allowing it to match pace with our own will. Intuitively.

Should writers be able to reconfigure time into something new, a product that raises the anxieties of this world out of anecdotal pockets, personal or collective and finds ways to put them to sleepwe may find the true worth of our word. Rather than filling time, we must sit intimate ly with it–let it haunt us and stir out words with worth.

You can’t see deeply sprinting through the woods, you must put your feet in the ground, plant them there and let them grow as the intricacy of your thoughts do like the gaze and ponderings of a flaneur or me as a child ‘alone’ in the wilderness with my tape recorder.

Oriental Fantasies

Since the release of Mulan in 1998, the nature of homogenisation and hybridisation in the film industry has shifted towards cultural heterogenization. Mainstream Hollywood enter tainment corporations and awards bodies have begun to move away from an era of ‘white washing’ and eurocentrism to recognise the dangers of American cultural imperialism and the value of international films that are permitted to be representative of the origin country.

As an alternative case study, Parasite is a film acclaimed by western standards despite being in Korean and a domestic, heterogenous portrayal of national class struggles. This contrasts to Mulan which is an adaptation that has been distorted to fulfill a western commercial illusion of a non-western cultural tale. ‘Whitewashing’ prioritises the construction and exploration of ‘white’ identities in media according to Xiaoqun Zhang. Zhang writes that whitewashing is a programmatic process which begins with casting in Hollywood and can extend to all aspects of filmmaking. In Mulan, several American actors of European descent were cast to dub the voices of characters who are traditionally Chinese in the folktale. As explored prior, this ‘whitewashing’ transcends to other aspects of the film and its reconstruction of gender, race and class for the purpose of homogenisation. To this respect, Wang and Yueh-yu Yeh write: “Through a process of deculturalization, all of the elements that are culture specific, in cluding those that are ethnic, historical or religious, that create barriers to intercultural reception or are deemed unfit for a new presentation style, may be contained in a familiar narrative pattern that not only plays down cultural differences, but also guarantees compre hension across viewer groups.”

Applying this viewpoint to Mulan, the homogenisation of gender, race and class are woven through the film to ensure that it is accessible for a globalised and Eurocentric viewership. By creating a ‘manageable’ oriental fantasy, Disney can fulfil their commercial, capitalist centric motivations. However, Hollywood is beginning to deem value in specific cultural media ex plorations that provide nuance to a western audience, moving away from films that encourage a docile state of viewership. Instead, films such as Parasite entice a thought-provoking pre sentation of cultural narratives which encourages a proactive viewing from the audience. The critical acclaim of Parasite from both industry experts and global audiences demonstrates the validity of this shift. Not only does the film reject whitewashing and Eurocentric narratives, instead exploring domestic class struggles, it articulates its national narratives in the mother tongue of the film’s origin, Korean. Director Bong Joon Ho asks his international audience to disregard the language difference as a significant obstacle, “once you overcome the 1-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films”. The “amazing films” which Joon Ho speaks of can be considered those which do not limit their capacity for storytelling through the cultural homogenisation and ‘whitewashing’ of race, gender and class but rather work to present refined, heterogenous interpretations of identity. In this sense, per haps globalisation does not always entice the production of media to align with commercial Hollywood standards and fulfil capitalist proliferation. Rather, the film industry in instances such as the production of Parasite, can use the increasingly interconnected state of the world and is capacity for communication to present heterogenous visions of distinct cultural nar ratives. Thus, the portrayal of gender, race and class as intersecting categories are able to be explored in a manner that does not homogenise an individual’s experience in the world but rather the individuality of identity and the nuance of varying international milieus.

CreativityisNecessity

What good is breathing if there is no reason to breathe.

Our impulse to keep breathing comes from our desire to see the depth of the creative world and to fill our pockets with its splendour so that we may feel a part of its beauty.

Math, science and the law keep us alive.

Art, makes us want to live, makes being alive enchanting and meaningful.

“Shape the world, and stop it going to sleep” Says Salman Rushdie.

Art stops the world from falling asleep.

There should be no debate of its intrinsic value.

Should someone gravitate naturally towards art they should be free in their pursuit of it.

We should be freely uninhibited by barriers or financial hurdles placed upon us by universities who intentionally raise the prices of our creative courses to dissuade those of us who do, naturally gravitate to them.

Instead, allow us to breath in this world and to breathe it back out anew, so that we may articulate its enchantment in our own way, creating a life worth living and being wide awake for.

A world shaped by artists who don’t let the world close its eyes or divert its gaze from the beauty and colour that we can create.

Let us fill our pockets and open your eyes.

Why does the world feel smaller in times ofcatastrophe?

Has COVID-19 has provoked or inhibited our individualism? Has our capacity to think in the interest of the collective shifted? How far has our western ideological tendency to individualism taken us?

From these questions, Yu and colleagues (2016) found increasing use of “me”/ “mine” in eight language groups over a span of 59 years. Often in times of catastrophe such as the Australian 2019 summer bush fires, I find myself feeling more connected to others. The world feels smaller as it is driven into despair. Whether this closeness arises from unity over a common emotion, I am un sure, but why does the world feel so much bigger during the Covid-19 pandemic? I assume it is be cause everyone is driven by their own safety and self-interest or that of our close friends and family.

We gasp at the numbers of cases and deaths overseas during these times of catastrophe and yet the world now doesn’t feel as small as it usually does when we are all suffering. Maybe it is because we can’t see our loved ones across the globe or because each country takes on its own policy while cri tiquing that of their neighbours. It’s something I can’t quite put my finger on.

Vinyl Vex

There’s something about putting on a record, you begin to unveil a new meaning and a sense of patience that is often lost when using modern technology. These primitive mediums dictate that you must surrender your impatient preference to the totality of the art-form, as the artist intended. You cannot skip, fast forward, shuffle or rewind. You begin to go with the motions, as the record turns you don’t lose this sense of control we have become used to, you gain an appreciation. Even as you sit waiting for the song you want to play, you may catch a new melody in another song that you had not recognised before. The artist’s storyline becomes more appar ent when played chronologically and you can understand their process be yond your own preference. It truly is their body of work, we simply get to enjoy it. Music is an anthology, one song is a singular part of a whole. There is also a tang bility that has attracted great appeal in a generation that rarely gets to feel the record rippling as the needle is placed down delicately. In a time when music is available to everyone, anywhere and any time, a record is uniquely yours in its physicality. The au dience become attentive listeners where the process of playing music becomes an experience beyond the pressing of a button. Nostalgia also per vades this experience, however there is perhaps a revitalised outlook on the past, a ‘retro’ lens and a sense of escapism from the consuming digital age. After all, half of all record buyers are younger than 25. What is it that has been able to attract the youth, those of us who are told we have a dwin dling attention span and are inclined to skip a track before we even grasp its melody? Perhaps it is refreshing, I enjoy teaching myself to be patient again, enjoying the composers anthology not just my favourite hit track.

EtNova

TheNew

“We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it, if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fin gers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass, the same hips and haws

etvetera

TheOld

on the autumn hedgerows, the same redbreasts that we used to call ‘God’s birds’ because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known and loved because it is known?”

- George Eliot

MAN fe wo MALE

The Instinctual Linguistic Supression of Women

- Robin Lakoff

The addition of ‘fe’ and ‘wo’ to male and man to create female and woman implies an afterthought, preempted by the naming of the male. The personal identity of women is linguistically submerged.

Mrs, Miss or Ms? Does it matter?

Like woMAN and feMALE, the titles Mrs and Miss carry the same sentiment. Either the woman belongs to her father or her husband, physically represented by the handing over as the bride reaches the end of the isle awaiting her new life as the possession of her husband. Interesting that a persisting tradition can come into question when we think about the linguistic use of titles. The way we refer to ourselves as women actually holds historical weight about our stature and identity.

when booking a plane ticket to return home to my family in Sydney I paid more attention to the box which asked me to select my title. In society’s eyes I am considered ‘Miss’ because I am young and unmarried. However, after engaging with research on the linguistic history of “Miss” and “Mrs”, I decided that the convention was dated and did not represent me as a person. Historically, through titles a woman is seen to either belong to her father ‘Miss’ or her husband ‘Mrs’ (Atkins-Sayre, 2005, 8-15). I find it interesting that the way we refer to ourselves as women actually holds historical weight about our stature and identity. The titles ‘Miss’ and ‘Mrs’, demonstrate that the personal and social identity of womanhood is linguistically submerged, reducing a woman’s semantic and actual independence. This supports the notion that “making men and women different from one another is the essence of gender. It is also the basis of men’s power and domination” (Zinn, Hondagneu-Sotelo and Messner, 2015, 171). The conception of patriarchy supported by essentialism (2015, 171) not only distinguishes between genders, it constructs women as objects (2015, 171) and in doing so elevates the societal primacy of men. This manifests linguistically, an adult male uses the title ‘Mr.’ despite their marital status as under the patriarchy they belong solely to themselves, as their own property. “Gender is a ‘regulatory fiction’ in society” (Butler in Phadke, 2009, 185) and so too is the establishment of titles to further reiterate these gendered constructions and to extend to convey class dynamics and entitlements. I chose “Ms” on my boarding pass because like men I am simply ‘of myself’, I am not ‘of my father’ or belonging to a husband. This patriarchal linguistic trope is archaic in my eyes. Though it may seem like an insignificant change to some, I feel empowered by choosing ‘Ms’ as my title. It represents my independence in the social milieu which I navigate, one where I often feel the burden of an ingrained patriarchy. I returned home feeling no less connected to my father, my title simply denies that I am his property and beholden to his decisions.

DanceAlong

- Nidala Barker

I admire the words of Nidala Barker, an Australian Indigenous musician who spoke about the way she believes we should approach allyship. As a non-Indigenous person, I often reflect on the role and privilege I have as I research my niche passion for the preservation of Indigenous languages through linguistic anthropology. Nidala gives her permission for me to be present in the conversation towards reconciliation in our country. Not only do I feel permitted to be present, I am allowed and encouraged to “dance along” in support. We must seek communi cation with our Indigenous people before we make claims or begin new initiatives in this area but we are encouraged to do so in genuine consultation and a communal process of allyship. I find that people hesitate to ask questions and converse with our First Nations people for fear of offending, but only with open ears can we grow. By closing our mouths and diverting our gaze we bring our progress to a halt, an open dialogue fractured. Instead we must nurture our mind’s conditioning away from the fear. I appreciate being given the permission to explore my passions in this area as an active ally who consults, listens and acts based on the feedback of elders but I am not afraid to dance at the party, it is our collective vision of Australia that we must cultivate and we can only do it together with respect for those who lived here before us.

“You don’t have to be the one playing the music to dance along. You don’t have to have the microphone to enjoy the concert. It doesn’t have to be your birthday to be at the party.”

Enough.

How can it be that one of the most under represented populations can simultaneous ly be the most overrepresented in the sectors of society that are attributed with crime and the incitement of hatred? “The Indigenous imprisonment rate is about 1,935 people per 100,000 adults” in 2020 whereas, “the impris onment rate for non-Indigenous Australians was about 166 people per 100,000 adults”. The irony that a native population dedicat ed to the cultivation of country, spirituali ty, community and environment can now be overwhelmingly represented in the western establishment of the prison system is stifling.

The contrast of a cold, sterile cell, padded by concrete and surveilled by a watchful eye, to the visceral warmth of red dirt and the hum ming of a Gum-nut tree as a physical exten sion of an ancestral life, bleeds ignorance from those who place their own union jacks on this purloined land just 233 years ago, erasing language and culture. Their veins pump with the stories we do not ask for the privilege to know, the language to learn or the practic es to cultivate. Instead, we silence them with bars. “They do not fit” we tell them, “they don’t know our rules”. Their cultural erasure is shrouded by our culpable fingerprint; the true crime. Our disease spreading blankets, our fel ony, our flora and fauna classification, our of fence, their underrepresentation, our liability.

The truth, a disconnect. My lack, our lack of effort to build community, share sto ries, be willing to learn. It is this depriva tion that alienates, creates us and them, the underrepresented yet greatly overrep resented people we ought to know before we confine them to a western system that further suppresses an endangered culture.

Labels Matter

“I am not an Aboriginal, or indeed Indigenous, I am ... [a] First Nation’s person. A sovereign person from this country. “- Rosalie Kunoth-Monks, Anmatyerr woman from Central Australia.

A commentary on article by Common Ground:

To understand Rosalie’s comment, the distinction be tween description and noun is fundamental. By referring to a person as ‘indigenous’ (often uncapitalised), a de scription is used to characterise and name an individual. Rosalie’s comment indicates the linguistic significance of adding ‘person’ and the capitalisation of Indigenous in order to justly refer to individuals as a noun rather than a description. Rosalie critiques the common focus on the characteristic of being ‘Aboriginal’ rather than being a ‘person’.

The use of racial slurs in the United States proposes a similar conversation regarding linguistic representation, particularly the N-word used by the African American community for “intragroup self-reference”. The use of this word has endured in their lexicon due to its prom inence in popular culture and social contexts. This lin guistic construction emphasises diasporic experience and its lasting implications. Whilst racism persists in a modern setting, the use of such words have the “capacity to convey a range of attitudinal stances related to its basic meaning, including solidarity, censure, and a proactive stance that seeks to bring about positive change”. The use of the N-word has now been reclaimed to empower instead of oppress, or as Osa Fasehun suggests, to “find empowerment from pain”.

Euphemism and Dichotomy

The N-word is used 500,000 times every day on twitter and it has become a dominant feature of popular culture. Comedians claim that the N-word has become a central part of their vernacular. However, it is worth noting that there are two constructions of the word, one ending in “er” and the other “a”. The meanings of these two words are distinctly different to some people. The first inciting hatred and connoting historic oppression, the latter has become “a term of endearment”.

The linguistic similarity of the two words manages to stimulate a conceptual dichotomy. The notion that a word, changed ever so slightly, can embrace such polari ty is rather conflicting. Unity and hatred both live within the same linguistic composition, yet not simultaneously. Each is expressed and the meaning is catalysed depen dent on the context, speaker and respondent.

However, the distinction between the ‘two words’ is not clear to all. By slightly altering the pronunciation, some argue that the foundational meaning and intent perse veres. Despite the euphemistic approach to the “a” end ing, the word is still too closely reminiscent of the his torical animosity regardless of the subtle grammatical difference.

Unity and the Collective Agenda

The cultivation of a common motion. A wave of progression through force, collective force. Such commonality is the root of change, a union of humanity to honour linkages rather than frontiers. Di vergent minds, opposing intent to that of those who are elected on their behalf, demands for justice and respect. Those fighting for their own rights and those exemplifying these efforts through allyship.

My shutter fixed on you

your bare gaze covers him a fervent state, a moment to capture, once ephemeral, but preserving your stature. Human commonality, a sense of fracture.

Photograph by Indigo Yeldham Winner of the National Future Leaders photography Prize

ilden & his Pervasive Intrigue

The etymology of Gilden’s photogra phy as its own creative language both intrigues and confronts his subject and audience.

Through confrontational exchanges Gilden captures moments which he himself suspends through his pace, rhythm and demeanour. Photographs of startled subjects captured as they react to Gilden’s flash overtly demon strate his distinct photographic ety mology within his broader language.

I took the image on the right at the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests in Sydney. I challenged myself to step off the pavement and stop someone in their tracks with my camera. This mindset is one of spontaneity that is reliant on impulse and lack of ratio nale. You have to move your body and take the image before you allow your mind to catch up. Our conditioning to be polite and honour personal space means that our thoughts of ‘am I being invasive?’ are inevitable.

Bruce Gilden

I usually fall into my conditioning as a photographer, I avoid invasive photography. I often observe and try not to demand from the subject what one does not wish to reveal to the world.

In this particular moment howev er, that social paradigm embodied within me, and consequentially my camera, was shifted because of my connection to this stranger and the storyline before me. The eye con

tact created is purely because of my brashness as I jumped off the sidewalk and on to the street in front of her. The connection between subject and photogra pher is accentuated through this unconventional dynamic. The beauty of the moment truly lies in its spontaneity and my deci sion to leave the conditioned, ra tional and polite part of my brain on the sidewalk, yet to catch up.

By: I Yeldham

Y

N“ThereisawordinSouthAfrica—Ubuntu—thatdescribeshisgreatestgift:hisrecog nitionthatweareallboundtogetherinwaysthatcanbeinvisibletotheeye;thatthere isaonenesstohumanity;thatweachieveourselvesbysharingourselveswithothers, andcaringforthosearoundus.”

- Barack Obama

TITranslated to “I am because you are”, the philosophy of Ubuntu asks us to look for the value in others to see value in ourselves. Desmond Tutu explains it best, “One of the sayings in our country is Ubuntu - the essence of being human. Ubuntu speaks particu larly about the fact that you can’t exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness. You can’t be human all by yourself, and when you have this quality - Ubuntu - you are known for your generosity. We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole World. When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity”.

To take us away from the micro of our individuality, to zoom out further to the macro cosm of humanity takes our focus and asks us to connect earnestly, authentically and with an understanding that communion with others feeds the soul. How can we find joy without the warmth of others and the gift of providing others with our own warmth.

“An anthropologist studying the habits and customs of an African tribe found himself surrounded by children most days. So he decided to play a little game with them. He managed to get candy from the nearest town and put it all in a decorated basket. at the foot of a tree. Then he called the children and suggested they play the game. When the anthropologist said “now”, the children had to run to the tree and the first one to get there could have all the candy to him/herself. So the children all lined up waiting for the signal. When the anthropologist said “now”, all of the children took each other by the hand ran together towards the tree. They all arrived at the same time divided up the candy, sat down and began to happily munch away. The anthropologist went over to them and asked why they had all run together when any one of them could have had the candy all to themselves. The children responded: “Ubuntu. How could any one of us be happy if all the others were sad?”

To be raised to be ambitious in the pursuit of collective success rather than to align with western teachings to embark on a quest climbing the ladder higher than anyone has before, to be the greatest, suffocates us from the spirit of ubuntu.

Sydney,2020

HILMA A

The Secret Growing

In this era of instant gratification and livestreams it seems astounding that a creator in any genre could restrain them selves from sharing their work for three generations (1906 - 1936 - 1966 - 1986). Not only did the painter Hilma af Klint do just that, she stipulated that her work not be seen until 20 years after her death in 1944. With the rapid ly increasing technological capacity that our society has to show and share our creations, we have become addicted to the currency of immediacy, however this seems to have been a diminished priority for the artist Hilma af Klint.

Born in Stockholm Sweden in 1862, Hilma af Klint studied painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. She received top honours and was recognised as a talented naturalistic painter, until she took a turn towards geometric abstraction, mys ticism and theosophy. In keeping with alternative modes of thinking during the time about the evolving intersection of science, quantum physics and long held religious dogma, she began to create the body of 193 works she named, ‘The Paintings for the Temple’, between 1906 and 1915. She ex plains her inspiration for the work in mystical terms;

“The phenomenon we are trying to explain is truly bewildering. What is the phenomenon, you ask? Well beloved, it is that which we want to call the secret growing” -Af Klint

She had expressed disappointment about her unsuccessful efforts to find receptive audiences for her themes and methodology, although she was given the opportunity to exhibit seventeen paintings at the Euro pean Federation of the Theosophical Society in Stockholm in 1913. It conjures up so many questions for the viewer from our contemporary vantage point; was she reading the times and sceptical of the limitations of her peers and society at large? Was she sending it forward like a bottle thrown out to sea, into the unknown because of a belief she held about tran scending time and place? In Hilma’s words;

“The experiments I have conducted… that were to awaken humanity when they were cast upon the world were pioneering endeavours. Though they travel through much dirt they will yet retain their purity.” - Af Klint

Awe is the main emotion I felt walking amongst and gazing at these epic spacious works, both in scale and affect. Klint uses a visual language of enigmatic symbols and colours that relate to gender identify, human emotional states and they seem to depict her interpretation of the human experience and the greater cosmos. The fantastically large scale of the pieces she named, “The 10 Largest” were intentionally painted to be exhibited together as they represent the stages of life from childhood to old age. The impact of the scale, abstrac tion and the symbolic use of colour of the 10 Largest seem to have the affect of overwhelming the consciousness of the viewer perhaps to even to wrap her viewer in the whole of existence.

By Jo Yeldham