Not From Here is a video based on an undated historical photograph found in the archives of the Broken Hill City Library in outback Australia. The photograph of a group of 12 young women and one young man was probably taken around the beginning of the 20th century.
It is an artwork that attempts to negotiate displacement, exile, migration and identity formation using a historical narrative. Unleashing the unheimlich through repetition, it emphasises the multiplicity of moods, characters and representations that can be inhabited in the same individual and at the same time. Dislocating the “prim and proper”, it challenges assumptions about race, gender and class. The photograph, as a tool for the suspension of time and an inert authoritative object is also contested as it morphs before our very eyes.
text by Mireille Astore
