Richard Bell

b. 1953, Charleville, Australia
lives and works in Brisbane

hawai‘i triennial 2022

@ IOLANI PALACE
@ HAWAI‘I STATE ART MUSEUM

Richard Bell, a member of the Kamilaroi, Kooma, Jiman and Gurang Gurang communities, works across installation, video, performance, painting, and text to challenge preconceived notions of Aboriginal art and cultural authenticity. Emerging out of a generation of Indigenous activists committed to self-determination, land rights, and sovereignty, Bell intervenes humorously and with an edge into westernized institutional settings to advance an ongoing discourse around colonization, capitalism, and the exploitation of people and resources.

One of Bell’s most traveled works, Embassy (2013–), a large tent adorned with hand-painted protest signs—‘WHITE INVADERS YOU ARE LIVING ON STOLEN LAND’; ‘IF YOU CANT LET ME LIVE ABORIGINAL WHY! PREACH DEMOCRACY’—has come to play an important role in the global biennial and triennial circuits of the twenty-first century. Bell’s work quotes the first Aboriginal Tent Embassy (a beach umbrella, initially, followed by tents) planted on the parliamentary lawns in Canberra in 1972. As with the original twentieth-century youth-driven protest action, Embassy reclaims public space in order to challenge the status, treatment, and rights of Aboriginal people in Australia, imagine and articulate alternate futures, and reflect on stories of oppression and displacement.

Gary Foley, Gumbainggir actor, activist, academic, and key member of the Aboriginal Black Power Movement that emerged in late 1960s Australia, writes about the 1972 Aboriginal Tent Embassy: ‘[it was] much more than a mere political stunt in that it featured elements that were highly theatrical and artistic in their intent and end result...derived in part from the fact that among the Black Power radicals there included seminal members of the Black Theatre movement like Bob Maza and Bindi Williams, and emerging artists such as Harold Thomas who had just weeks earlier designed the now famous Aboriginal flag.’ Indeed, in Australia, as elsewhere, activism, art, and theatrics are closely linked to many acts of refusal and affirmation.

Embassy has roved the planet over the past eight years, popping up in numerous galleries, museums, and periodic exhibitions across Melbourne (2013), Perth (2014), Cairns (2016), Brisbane (2016), and Sydney (2016; 2021); Moscow (2013); Venice (2015, 2019); Jakarta (2015); New York (2015; 2017); Jerusalem (2016); Amsterdam and Arnhem (2016).

For HT22 the work will be pitched again, this time on the royal grounds of Iolani Palace—the official residence of Hawaiʻi’s last reigning monarchs and center of the Hawaiian nation’s political and social life until the U.S.-backed overthrow of 1893. In this contested setting—where Mōʻīwahine Lydia Lili‘uokalani, sister of and heir to Mōʻī Kalākaua, was wrongfully imprisoned following the failed counterrevolution launched by Royalists loyal to the Hawaiian Kingdom—Bell’s Embassy takes on additional charge.

Countering the erasure of Indigenous stories, cultures, and places, Embassy addresses local concerns through a series of workshops, panel discussions, performances, and screenings by an intergenerational group of activists, artists, educators, administrators, and community leaders and members based in Hawaiʻi. Incorporating documentation and material from all previous iterations of the installation, Bell’s enactment continues to hold ground—a testament to the original Aboriginal Tent Embassy and a reminder of the ways in which Indigenous and Black communities as well as communities of color continue to demand justice across national borders.