Mountains of Miscommunication
CAIA was a subject that at first, I didn’t get, and I didn’t really want to do. By going through this course, I learnt a lot about what makes indigenous art and culture so important. I also have to say that I have no Australian or Aboriginal in me, so this is an outside view on the issues.
The work I did for CAIA was called “Mountains of miscommunication” and was based on the story of the glass house mountains. It’s a story based around miscommunication and being punished for the misunderstanding. I related the messages of miscommunication to how most of us treat and don’t communicate with the original owners of the land. The morse code symbolises the language barrier that we have with other cultures. The fact is if we put in some effort to understand morse code we would understand what it means. It is the same with other cultures, if we just put in the time to understand their culture we can connect with people on a more genuine level. The work also has themes of separation using the composition and the white borders on the mountains to separate the mountains from the story told in morse code. This further shows the distance between the cultures and people we have in our society.
This all comes together in saying just because we don’t understand a language or culture it doesn’t mean its invalid. This is the basis of most racism towards other cultures as we fear what we don’t understand. What would have happened if we tried to understand the cultures that were already existing here instead of trying to change them and there prospective. Just by learning more about other people you can have truer and healthier connections.
If you want to read the story this work was based of just click on this link:
