Feminist Studies

Feminist Studies 45, no. 2/3. © 2019 by Feminist Studies, Inc.  marina tyquiengco Black Velvet: Aboriginal Womanhood in the Art of Fiona Foley in a presentation at the global fEminisms exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in 2007, artist Fiona Foley (b. 1964) stated that, prior to the exhibition, she did not know how to spell feminism and that her position as a woman came second to her position as an Australian Aboriginal person.1 Her contributions to the exhibition included images of women, but were on the topic of racism against all Aboriginal peoples, not issues particular to Aboriginal women, such as the dramatically high rates of abuse and violence that they suffer.2 In her statement, Foley used the phrase “spell feminism” as a means of dismissing feminism as inapplicable to her work and life. Her statement in Brooklyn was an attempt to strategically distance herself from white Australian feminism, which she views as having a problematic and paternalistic history with respect to Aboriginal women.3 In this paper, I highlight a number of Foley’s artworks to argue that womanhood is central to her sense of being 1. Brooklyn Museum, “Global Feminisms: Fiona Foley,” 2007, https://www.you tube.com/watch?v=sg7CiLhzwQY. 2. Marcia Langton, “For Her We Must: No Excuses, Time to Act,” Griffith Review 60 (2018), https://griffithreview.com/articles/for-her-we-must-noexcuses -naidoc-marcia-langton. 3. Fiona Foley, “Biting the Clouds: The Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act, 1897” (PhD confirmation paper, Griffith University , 2017), 12. 468 Marina Tyquiengco Aboriginal, which is based on her deep ties to other Aboriginal women. In considering Foley’s work, I draw on the concept of intersectionality as coined by law scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in order to understand why the artist would want to distance herself from feminism while making art about women.4 Distance from feminism allows Foley to centralize Aboriginal women’s experiences in her work and conceptualize them as distinct from those of white women. Although not widely known in the United States, Fiona Foley is a prominent artist who has exhibited nationally at Australia’s major museums and globally in Austria, China, Ireland, Japan, and the United States.5 She is a member of the Wondunna clan of the Badtjala people from K’Gari, also known as Fraser Island, in the Queensland state of Australia.6 Foley is a scholar, lecturer, and practicing artist. She studied sculpture and printmaking at the Sydney College of the Arts, a major art school in Australia, from 1984–86. In 2017, she received her PhD from Griffith University in Brisbane based on her research about the 1897 Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act, an important law that greatly restricted the mobility of Aboriginal peoples in Queensland and beyond.7 As is common practice, I will use the term Aboriginal to refer to the linguistically and culturally diverse Indigenous peoples of Australia. Aboriginal is a Latin-rooted English word meaning “from the origin.”8 It has been in use for most of Australia’s history to label its Indigenous peoples, carrying many negative connotations as well as more recent positive valences, such as Aboriginal rights 4. Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics , and Violence Against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991): 1241–99. 5. Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, “Fiona Foley: Black Velvet 1996,” https://learning.qagoma.qld.gov.au/artworks/black-velvet. See also Fiona Foley, Horror Has a Face (Bowen Hills, Queensland, Australia: Andrew Baker, 2017), 45–75. 6. Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, “Fiona Foley: Black Velvet 1996.” 7. Fiona Foley, “Bio” (2018), http://fionafoley.com.au/bio; Fiona Foley, “Biting the Clouds,” 5–6. 8. Australian scholar Ian McLean provides an explanation of how Aboriginal is used in his chapter “Names,” in Double Desire: Transculturation and Indigenous Contemporary Art, ed. Ian McLean (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), 15–31. Marina Tyquiengco 469 or Aboriginal pride.9 The term “Aboriginal” is akin to “Indian” in the American context. As Comanche scholar Paul Chaat Smith has argued, diverse, distinctive Native peoples became Indians through...