First Nations Peoples of Australia are among the oldest continuous living cultures and one of the most incarcerated, as evidenced in kith and kin by Archie Moore. After viewers’ eyes have adjusted to the low light levels in the Australia Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, an immense genealogical chart hand drawn in white chalk on the black walls and ceiling comes into view. It inscribes the artist’s relations from the Kamilaroi and Bigambul Nations over 65,000 years and more recently his paternal British and Scottish relations. The vast drawing traces the artist’s personal history from himself, close kin, distant relatives, segueing through racist slurs, and extending to countless generations of Ancestors. Anthropologist Norman Tindale’s genealogical diagram that professed to document Archie’s Aboriginal relations is exceeded by the greater complexity of First Nations kinship systems. In kith and kin, the linear chart concerned with the transfer of property transforms into an undulating web of connection that reinforces responsibilities to all living things. Kinship is the organising principle for Indigenous social relations, and incorporates plants, animals, land and waterways. Archie’s drawing reaches so far into time that it captures the common Ancestors of all humans, a timely reminder that every person on the planet has kinship duties to one another.
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