Mei Kim and Minnie
2006; 2023
- Medium
- type C print
- Measurements
- (29.7 × 42.0 cm)
- Place/s of Execution
- Darwin, Northern Territory
- Accession Number
- 2024.635
- Department
- First Nations Australia
- Credit Line
- National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, NGV Supporters of First Nations Art, 2024
© Gary Lee - Gallery location
- Gallery 10
Level 2, NGV Australia - About this work
-
‘This work is a celebration of Larrakia female beauty across four generations of my family, the Lee clan, and is in homage to my maternal great-great alap (grandmother) Minnie (Annie) Duwun. Paul Foelsche photographed Minnie in Darwin twice, first in 1878 as a fifteen-year-old and again in April 1887 when she was twenty-four. I photographed my sister’s beautiful daughter, my niece Mei Kim, to represent contemporary Larrakia womanhood and to link her to Minnie, who is her great-great-great alap. In this work I honour the Lee family Larrakia ancestor Minnie (Annie) Duwun and affirm our Larrakia identity and Larrakia connection to place, to Darwin. I am reappropriating the colonial Larrakia photograph of my great-great alap and re-presenting her as the strong, beautiful Larrakia woman that she was.’
– Gary Lee, 2006