Disobedient Daughters: Counihan Gallery

Janelle Low
At Your Surface, 2018
Pigment inkjet print and gold leaf Porcelain and gold lustre
Prints 23 x 15cm, cups dimensions variable

Janelle Low

6 Feb - 21 Mar 2021

Disobedient Daughters is a group exhibition that brings together the works of nine female artists and artist collectives to critically examine stereotypical images of Asian women in a global context.

The artists in this exhibition work predominantly with photography and video to playfully explore the interplay between race, gender, sexuality and societal expectations. Through a particular focus on portraiture or self-portraiture, many of the exhibiting artists challenge visual tropes of Asian women, and their continued objectification and/or exoticism in popular media. While not purely autobiographical, many of the works are derived from introspective encounters and personal narratives, blurring the boundaries of public and private life.

Some of the works in the exhibition are bold and loud, others are more quiet and subtle, but together the artists in Disobedient Daughters offer a diverse and nuanced perspective on themes of everyday relations and individual life as it relates to a ‘Asian female experience.’ The exhibition does not seek to define what this experience might be, but instead hopes to offer new perspectives and possibilities for the future.

Low’s recent works subvert traditional printmaking processes, continually pushing at the boundaries of what can be classified as ‘photography’. Drawing on the customary use of gold for dowries, Low simultaneously questions and highlights the measuring of worth by obscuring the identities of the women with the application of gold leaf on the surface of the image.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

Curated by Sophia Cai