Emerging Artist: Reflections by Elysia Love-Anderson

Elysia Love-Anderson is a proud descendant of the Kamilaroi people of Northern New South Wales and South-West Queensland, and a descendant of the Stolen Generation. Reflections is a self-portrait painted under the Birrunga Gallery group theme of Ancestral Integrity, a response to the rise of artificial intelligence. 

The work explores stories passed through generations, stories that live in the body, stories that artificial intelligence cannot replace. At the centre of the work is an outline of Love-Anderson herself, without facial features, surrounded by the outlines of her ancestors: her great-grandfather in red, her great-great-grandmother in yellow, her great-great-grandfather in black. Each was painted from one of the only photographs she has of them. The only eyes on the canvas belong to the ancestors, visible in the background. “Although I didn’t get to meet them, their stories live on through me.”