Shevaun Wright, Sophia Hewson (aka Dirty talk) Atong

Born in Ethiopia and based in Melbourne, South Sudanese artist and writer Atong Atem works mainly in photography. Her work often explores colonialism and ethnographic portraiture through the lens of ‘otherness’.

Shevaun Wright is an Indigenous lawyer and artist. Sophia Hewson, who is an artist and practising psychotherapist, has been an Archibald finalist on three previous occasions. Like Atem, they share an interest in the formation of identity, and the ongoing costs of colonialism.

‘Incorporating Atem’s childhood blonde-haired, blue-eyed doll, this painting presents an imagined, psychic landscape full of memories and dreamlike impressions of bodies, colour and touch,’ say the artists.

‘The painting suggests the cognitive dissonance of growing up in a place where you are both invisible and hyper-visible; where the colonial project renders certain bodies good or beautiful, and others ugly or threatening. It also imagines the spectral beauty of finding your voice in all its hue, joy and power, as Atem has done, within a world saturated by whiteness.’