Self Portrait (But I always wanted to be one of the Macho Men)
Keemon Williams
- Sitter: Self Portrait
- Medium: Photograph
- Dimensions: 80cm x 120cm
- Representation: This artist represents themselves
About the artist and artwork
Keemon Williams is a queer Meanjin, Brisbane, based artist of Koa, Kuku Yalanji and Meriam Mir descent. He uses an array of mediums, old and new, to expand his relationships with location, personal histories and cultural plasticity. Through practice he forges belonging within all parts of the self.
This work renders a still-life dramatisation of the artist’s interior self and its inheritances from those who’ve come before.
Conversation unfolds between Randy Jones of The Village People, the illuminating philosophy of the late Gordon Bennett, and the artist himself, in front of an inimitable Albert Namatjira backdrop.
Williams pays tribute to and celebrates identities of Camp, Queerness and Indigeneity through romantic Western tropes of ‘manhood’.
Here the lens of Western portraiture is co-opted and confronted.
Is the artist a subject of desire? Or is the artist gazing back at the viewer, knowingly appropriating stereotypes of Eurocentric histories with a steely smoulder?
