Exhibition Review: A Preponderance of Aboriginal Blood

A free Tate Modern exhibition, A Year in Art: Australia 1992, shows how racism and prejudice can undermine our democracy.

Photo taken by the writer from the exhibition.

In the first chapter of On Liberty (1859), John Stuart Mill clarifies that its critique of paternalistic attitudes towards individual freedom of thought and pursuits did not apply to children, whose age still required adult guidance and supervision. Mill applies the same reasoning to those who were “in a backward state of society in which race itself may be considered as in its nonage”. The English philosopher, and most likely many of his contemporaries as well, put non-white non-European people’s intellectual maturity on the same level as that of kids. This contrast between cutting-edge liberal philosophy and colonial paternalism that now outrages the contemporary reader is curiously pervasive throughout Western history.

The Allied forces arguably saved Europe from the “end of Civilization” by defeating Nazism in World War II. Democracy faced its biggest threat, and the Anglo-American forces managed to protect it. But it turns out that, rather than democracy itself, what was saved was a white Western model of democracy. In saying so, I do not wish to diminish the importance of the European sacrifice in any way, being myself from a country, Italy, that got freed from Nazi-fascism, thanks to the huge contribution of the Allied forces. However, it is vital to unveil the widespread political hypocrisy of the white Western man, so that one can now consciously try to be contrary to it. 

Colonial greed, exploitation, and paternalism have proven to be difficult to eliminate; it took until 1992 for the Australian High Court to rule out the principle of terra nullius (lit. land belonging to no one), which was the legal basis for colonial conquest of indigenous territories. This judiciary landmark is due to a legal battle carried out by Torres Strait Islander land-rights activist, Edward Koiki Mabo. On the 30th anniversary of this success, the Tate Modern organised a free exhibition called Year in Art: Australia 1992, open from 8 June 2021 to Spring 2022. The artworks explore both the relationship that indigenous people have with their land and the legacy of the colonial past in contemporary Australian society.

Multi-media artist, Judy Watson, was born in Mundubbera, Queensland, in 1959, and is now based in Brisbane. Her high-impact artwork called ‘a preponderance of aboriginal blood’, commissioned by the State Library of Queensland in 2005, exposes the brutal contradictions of racist policies in democratic Australia. Watson copied official documents, letters, and electoral enrolment statuses from the Queensland State Archive and stained them with blood-like red paint. In addition to symbolising the pain and suffering of indigenous Australians, the blood echoes the legal terminology used in the documents. “Blood” was in fact the parameter to classify race, and consequently, the right to vote in Queensland elections: citizens who had “a preponderance of aboriginal blood”, namely indigenous origins on both parental lines, were not entitled to democratic rights until 1965.

A letter dated 9 December 1949, just four years after democratic rights were saved in Europe by the same people that were writing, states that “The State Electoral Act provides that persons having a preponderance of aboriginal blood are not eligible to vote.” The beginning of this letter, written in response to an Aboriginal woman who was trying to find a legal loophole to get voting rights, is even more grotesque: “Madam, I have received your communication […], but do not clearly understand your complaint.” The rules were crystal clear; why should that lady raise such objections? If the letter was written in German, dated 1939, and “Jewish” was written in place of “aboriginal”, we would be less surprised.

It is very likely that in both cases, the bureaucrats that signed those letters were ordinary fellows, who at the end of the day would go home to their families without showing any trace of evil in their attitude. Their lives were like the seemingly-innocent “beautiful and old-fashioned” aesthetic of the documents that, behind a veil of ordinary elegance, conveyed their “horrific content”. German Philosopher Hannah Arendt, in her 1963 masterpiece Eichmann in Jerusalem: a report on the Banality of Evil, provides a dramatically vivid portrait of how monstrous deeds can be carried out by non-monstrous people if they do not think critically. On the one hand, Hannah Arendt writes with a totalitarian context in mind, and their aim is to give the readers the knowledge and tools to beware of the totalitarian trap. On the other, Judy Watson is deeply rooted in the Australian context, particularly Aboriginal heritage, being her matrilineal family of Waanyi origin, an indigenous ethnic group of North Queensland. Watson’s political involvement, as Arendt's, is lucid, heartfelt and brutal in its clarity. 

While visiting the Tate Modern exhibition, looking at the featured works, one may be outraged by the political and social oppression faced by Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders. They would be right. My recommendation is to pay particular attention to the dates of Watson’s documents: 1932, 1935, 1942, 1949. While democratic freedom was saved for white Europeans, it was taken away from indigenous populations in the colonies. Situating Watson’s work in its historical context, her blood-stained documents are a loud cry to keep our minds awake and to not let our democratic governments make the mistakes committed by their authoritarian counterparts.