RAVI PRASAD
Brown Man on White Paper A — $400
2023, drawing on paper, 40 x 40 cm
Brown Man on White Paper B — $400
2023, drawing on paper, 40 x 40 cm
Ravi’s great grandparents were Girmityas, Indians coerced into indentured labour by the British, to work on sugar cane plantations in Fiji.
Essentially an impoverished colonised people, bought by a colonising power, to another people’s colonised land.
And then it gets complicated. Toward the end of the White Australia Policy, Ravi’s father emigrated to yet another colonised land, Australia – as Ravi would joke, ‘essentially doubling the number of Indian gentlemen in Adelaide from one, to two’.
So, from the very beginning, questions of identity and belonging have been the centre of gravity for Ravi’s work.
See more of Ravi’s work on Instagram @parliamentonking