For Cedric Varcoe, painting hundreds of shrouds to mark the deaths in custody of his Aboriginal brothers and sisters brought up raw emotions.
“They might be gone from us physically, but they’re still remembered and still cared about,” the Ngarrindjeri artist told SBS News.
Cedric's own uncle died in custody in Sydney in the 1970s and his brother died by suicide in jail.
“[The artwork] really brought some raw emotions up in me, feelings that I felt I’d dealt with but really I’m still dealing with because I’m the only male left in my family.”
The painting of 500 concrete shrouds forms part of an installation called Contested Space, by a group of South Australian artists. It is aimed at drawing attention to the number of Indigenous people who have died in custody since the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.
There have been at least 437 Indigenous deaths in custody since the royal commission.
Cedric says the symbolism and imagery painted on the shrouds represents pain, fear, anxiety and a strong connection to culture.
“Some of us feel like we’ve been born into it - the intergenerational traumas that have been passed down to us," he said.
“It gives you depression, gives you bad mental health issues and makes you feel like you’re not wanted by the wider community."
In 2020 alone, seven Indigenous people died in custody: four in West Australian jails, two in Victorian prisons and one in a Brisbane watchhouse.
Cedric said each death ignited the pain of those that came before.
“When one member of our community passes away, we all mourn for them, so we are in constant morning,” he said.
“We’re losing a community member all the time.”
During the process of creating the work, with collaborators from Change Media and fellow Ngarrindjeri artist Clyde Rigney, Cedric said they delved into the issues and processes that can lead to someone losing their life in custody.
"Racism, poverty, losing your family, the trauma of being taken from home, drug or alcohol dependence and how they feel so lonely and that they don’t matter to the wider community.”
Connecting to his Indigenous heritage through Country and art gives Cedric the strength to cope with the weight of the past and the racism he still regularly experiences.
“It’s like I don’t matter in the wider society and I struggle with that too, you know. When people don’t know me, they might see me as this big, giant, scary person," he said.
“In Ngarrindjeri culture, our Miwi [inner spiritual connection to the land] is what gives us the strength, and gives us our identity that connects us to Country, connects us to our waterway and our totems and to each other.
“I’ve been a strong believer that culture can help you cope.”
'Whitewashing of colonisation'
Change Media co-founder Carl Kuddell grew up in Germany with a strong sense of the importance of acknowledging wrongs of the past to make sure they weren’t repeated.
He said the stark difference in the way Germans commemorated the Holocaust and Australians talked about what he described as the genocide of Australia's First Nations people was the inspiration for the artwork.
“The idea was that the outside faces of the shrouds speak to the concrete-grey whitewashing of colonisation snuffing out lives and covering up of deaths and related responsibilities,” he said.
His artistic partner Jen Lyons-Reid described the process of making the shrouds as an emotional journey that saw her first create replicas of 500 faces, then “snuff” out their identity by dipping them in concrete.
Change Media co-founders Carl Kuddell and Jen Lyons-Reid. Source: SBS News/Peta Doherty
“It’s been quite a tricky work to make because it is so painful,” she said.
But it's a confronting subject the artists hope all audiences will also engage with.
“How can I as a non-Indigenous person come to terms [with this]? What do I need to do, how am I in that conversation?”
Contested Space has most recently been on display at Signal Point Gallery in Goolwa, South Australia. The artists are currently looking for a new home for the work.
