BINDI COLE CHOCKA

Bindi Cole Chocka tears herself apart by doing a frantic purge of her sentimental belongings in a video performance and installation titled Bindi's Boxes.

 

ARTIST STATEMENT

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A few years ago, for charity, I photographed a calendar of Aboriginal sports stars. The first print run of these was on the wrong paper and had to be redone.  After two years of hard work, this was a great dissapointment. I was given some boxes of the defective calendars, which I stored in my garage.

 

My mum was a writer. A wild woman with red hair and a sharp tongue. When I was sixteen, she died.  So I packed up my life in a series of boxes, stuck them in my dad’s garage and left town. They have remained unopened for 18 years.

 

It occurs to me that the things in our life that are hard, we put into boxes and hide away. Some of those hidden boxes, sitting in the dark can take over our lives.

 

This body of work looks at how the negative events from our lives can form a victim identity and attempts to reverse that process. It’s too easy to become the victim, to be shredded by the parts of us that are hidden. Through the use of video, stills, collage and installation, an homage is created to honour these events in a positive, healthy and cathartic way. 

 

It’s time to unpack. 

 

Bindi’s Boxes exposes some uncomfortable truths about the fundamental disconnection between who we are and the experiences by which we shape our sense of self.