Melanin Garden - A Portrait of Anisa Nandaula
Tamara Armstrong
- Sitter: Anisa Nandaula
- Medium: Acrylic on Linen
- Dimensions: 64 x 80 cm
- Representation: The artist represents themselves
About the artist
Tamara Armstrong graduated from QUT in 2003 with a dual degree in Visual Art and Secondary Education and officially entered the professional art world in 2011. Growing up with a variety of artistic family influences, Armstrong has been exposed to the arts and has been a “maker” for as long as she can remember. She paints to understand her life and cultural heritage as she lives it, blending her innate love for colour and nature with contemporary perspectives of “connection”, to create visually bold and uplifting imagery. Her work largely deals with concepts of “representation, place and empowerment. Armstrong has been a finalist in the Portia Geach Memorial Award, the Kennedy Art Prize, the Redland Bay Art Award as well as having a portrait selected and hung in the 2017 Salon des Refuses for the Archibald Prize.
About the sitter
Brisbane based Anisa Nandaula is a nationally recognised spoken word poet, play writer, educator and published author. She is the Queensland Slam Poetry champion 2016 and placed second in the Australian National Slam Poetry finals. She is also the co-founder of the arts collective Voices of Colour. Voices of Colour is a Brisbane-based youth led collective that creates spaces for young artists from diverse backgrounds to share poetry, rap, dance and any other forms of creative expression. Their mission is to use art to create spaces for people of colour and first nations mobilise their communities. Her political poetry focuses on not only highlighting social justice issues but educating and engaging people to have difficult discussions. Her story telling combines poetry, rhythm, rhyme and performance to captivate hearts and minds.
