This is my heritage

8 Jul 2015

Queensland Museum exhibition curators Michael Aird and Mandana Mapar celebrate NAIDOC Week 2015 through mementoes and stories of shared life experiences and with a deep love of and respect for culture.

Thinking of the theme for this year’s NAIDOC celebrations We all Stand on Sacred Ground: Learn, Respect and Celebrate, we set out to bring stories together to reflect core themes of family connections, tangible connections to country, the unique techniques of craftsmanship in the making of the artefacts, and historical and political milestones in Queensland Indigenous history.

We gather our mementos and stories around us and we surround ourselves with those stories and memories that guide us to tell our own personal recollections with strength and conviction. In bringing these stories together we could not have asked for more engaging story-tellers who were so generous with their time and recollections of childhood and the many life experiences that have shaped their identities.

We began by asking for the stories that mattered most to each person. The story tellers’ excitement at discovering specific details about artefacts in the museum’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander collection is what caught us by surprise. There is no doubt that the museum’s collection holds deeply moving and important stories and often these stories go untold until people come into the collection storeroom and connect with an object from their country. It is then that the true richness and depth of culture becomes genuinely evident.

The title of this exhibition comes from a pivotal play staged in 1990 in the Queensland Museum, You Came to My Country and Didn’t Turn Black. One of the actors from the play, Roxanne McDonald was invited back to the Queensland Museum as part of this exhibition project. Roxanne held a photograph of herself taken 25 years previously as she performed one of Oodgeroo Noonuccal’s poems and she remembered this powerful poem with the title, This is my heritage — so this became the exhibition title.

This is my heritage has been a truly delightful exhibition to work on. The portraits you will see throughout the space and the film created by Mick Richards have come together in a very short amount of time with the support and involvement of these wonderful community members. These artists and educators share their innermost curiosity and wonder, deeply moving family stories, personal recollections with such honesty that they deserve to be the focus of the exhibition.

Michael Aird has worked in the area of arts and cultural heritage since 1985. He has curated over 25 exhibitions and published several academic articles and books. Much of Michael’s work has focused on art and photography, reflecting his interest in recording aspects of urban Aboriginal history and culture.

Mandana Mapar has worked as an arts administrator and curator since 2002. She graduated with a Fine Arts degree from the Queensland College of Art and has a photo-media based arts practice and ongoing passion for photography and documenting history.

Michael and Mandana have worked together as freelance curators since 2011.

Feature image and authors’ image by Magda Ciez. Other images by Mick Richards.