Studio Portraits: âThird Culture Kidsâ | Photography by Atong Atem.
When did racial and cultural identity enter your work? Iâve always been making art that was Afro-centric or turned towards colonialism, race, and gender. I got into that young from coming to Australia as a migrant. Youâre almost forced to confront your identity as an âotherâ immediately. Iâm ethnically South Sudanese, but my family migrated as refugees when I was six years old after leaving South Sudan via Ethiopia and living in a refugee camp in Kenya.
I remember painting portraits of my family in primary school. Everybody else used the peachy, pastel coloured crayons, so I would too. It wasnât until a teacher confronted me and said, âwhy arenât you using brown crayons?â, that I started questioning and thinking about my position in Australian culture and society. I was so ashamed and embarrassed that I didnât even recognise my identity in the colours I was using. I made a decision to only use brown colours-that translated to exploring blackness later on in life.
Your series is about Third Culture Kids. What does that mean to you? There are days where I feel I know my identity and Iâm really strong in it, and then there are days where Iâm like, who am I in this world? I think itâs cool to recognise that a lot of people have those experiences-not just in relation to cultural identity, but gender and sexuality and what they want to do in life. Being a Third Culture Kid, means recognising thereâs a space that exists between the culture weâre from and the culture weâre living in. I feel not South Sudanese enough, or not Australian enough. I have to accept that Iâll never be both: those ideas are completely fabricated from outside of myself. For a lot of people who realise they exist in that in-between space, itâs kind of upsetting because youâre neither this nor that. But being a third culture kid can be whatever you want.
Read more at i-D.
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