Rebecca Agnew, Infinite West, 2022
However, change and continuity are always closely intertwined in the transformation of human society. So, while the after will be different, it will be built on the before.
It would be illusory to presume that nationalism is as defined as the borders of our island Australia. Nationalism is slippery and collides with the past and present, similarly to the tides that shape our shores. Historically, migration, colonisation and Traditional Owners have all flooded, formed and reformed our sense of national identity. But these predecessors have been visible with overlapping intersections, and perplexities. How we now revise our idea of nationalism as our borders have rendered us insular as shaped by the invisible pandemic is a cause for critical enquiry.
A preamble of understanding would position nationalism, both pre-COVID and in its wake, as aspirational, imaginary and collective. However, at the heart of nationalism are identity issues both subjective and generic. These are subject to the flux of the social, political and economic – and where the individual resides is as complex as the virus itself.
As the pandemic evolved and traversed borders it united nations under the guise of global cooperability and yet simultaneously divided communities. The global cooperability laid bare global inequalities, not least spearheaded by the West. This undercurrent was further entrenched through isolationist policies that moved from global contexts to the divisions of states, cities, neighbourhoods, suburbs, families, partners, friends and individuals.
The global domino effect of near-simultaneous lockdowns was not a shared experience. The complexities of inequalities surfaced in ways we never had seen before. Each locale was treated differently, each demographic was clearly defined and yet we were governed by a sense of nationalism that never prevailed. Gender, race and economic factors all impacted decision making by the state and, ultimately, at a federal level. A response to the infringements of civil liberties could not be sold as a new type of nationalism. The closure of borders was easy to understand as an island state but the closure of suburbs, neighbourhoods and, worse, the most vulnerable members of our communities, was less palatable.
While watching the daily COVID cases mount turned into a new national sport, government control became a competitive anxiety as our personal information was sequestered and data retention became a new fear in itself. Tracking apps became the weapon against the pandemic wars provided through our personal data. We complied. We gave it away. We were complicit. And yet, as we noted that our responses were not united, did we expect to replace utilitarianism with a new form of nationalism? How much we gave away is yet to be fully understood and the ramifications are worth examining in the future. What we can appreciate is that nationalism is as undefined as ever. What has been better defined is how much governmental control can infringe upon our corporeal selves. Vaccinated? Unvaccinated? Anti-Vaxxer? Boosted once, twice, thrice? Our physical selves were divided by government mandates and subjected to public scrutiny like never before.
Previously, Australia had experienced surges of nationalism as the aftermath of great historical successes: the ANZAC victory, Brisbane’s World Expo, the America’s Cup triumph and, of course, the 2000 Olympics. How does Australia experience nationalism under the strain of a pandemic that did not unite, but ultimately divided its citizens on stolen land never ceded?
It has been said that this is an exhibition in two parts: before and after.
Under the guise of cultural hybridity and plurality of perspectives, we can position Rebecca Agnew’s view of the world. Agnew’s Infinite West (2022) becomes a metaphor for the constant flux of intersecting perceptions that make up nationalism. Her feminist protagonists span time and cultures and wrestle with a landscape of patriarchy. The world of social and political organisation is questioned as Agnew’s cowgirl protagonists straddle this divide of pre-pandemic and after.
Hybrid in skill set and referential to disrupting cultural norms by appropriation and popular culture mashups, Agnew is a New Zealand–born resident of Australia. Her practice investigates the terrain of borders through the feminist framework. She creates stop animation narratives that loop time in less of a continuum but an overlapping duration. Through this loop, Infinite West becomes a metaphor for the continuum of colonial structures which decolonialism defies. However, her Barbiesque cowgirls remind us that the true role of colonisation is felt through the governance of our physical selves and erosion of identity.
Much like our understanding of nationalism, Infinite West provides an untidy collection of symbols, metaphors and textures in Agnew’s conflation of the historical and cultural. Her narrative begins with the female pharaoh Hatshepsut, who posthumously suffered the indignity of desecration and amputation of her place in the royal and the divine. Within Part I Hatshepsut Summons Her Heir, Hatshepsut removes the symbol of divination – the pharaoh’s beard, and appears to praise the phallic order that provided the seat of power she would endeavour to share. Agnew’s narrative progresses to a surreal, almost dystopian landscape, encapsulating a speculative genre of post-COVID nationalism. Here the historical collides with the contemporary, and Hatshepsut’s usurping of power is later reclaimed by the cowgirl as she wrestles and castrates cacti penises. Sadly, this is to the demise of all the characters central to Infinite West’s narrative.
Much like the similarities with a pre-COVID understanding of nationalism, Infinite West draws on collectivity, identity and, certainly, the role of governance over the body. The cowgirl defies the cowboy stereotype: one of being alone, free and without a fixed identity. Here, the pink velour–wearing heroine never appears alone in a landscape dominated by phalluses and morphed creatures. Central to the narrative, our cowgirl focuses on rescuing a stolen primal egg. Again, Agnew draws on themes of collectivism, cultural hybridity and reclamation of the right of reproductive cycles. As seen in Part IV, the barbiesque cowgirl summons through her dreamcatcher the all feminist support within the phallus desert. Through this, collective feminist action prevails and the egg is rescued. Reproductive rights are central to Infinite West’s themes and not untimely in a post-COVID examination of nationalism especially within the context of the USA’s reversal of Roe v Wade; inclusive to this are post-feminist gender conversations around identity and the corporeal body. -Perhaps Agnew’s greatest metaphor is the idea of an enduring (infinite) Western hegemony.
Lizzy Marshall