| Summary: | How can we, as non-Indigenous persons, ethically engage in dialogue and honest criticism of Indigenous art? My thesis investigates this question in the context of multicultural Australia. I use a framework of critical race and whiteness studies to critique previous answers to my opening question that conclude we either should not engage in dialogue with Indigenous art, or alternatively, that this question is irrelevant as we live in a multicultural, post-race context in which categories of racial identity no longer matter. I argue that such conclusions are symptomatic of the invisible power of whiteness in our (post)colonial context. I read the works and practice of artists Fiona Foley and Vernon Ah Kee as challenges to these conclusions. Both of these artists engage with themes of identity, race and Australia’s colonial history. In so doing they weave narratives of resistance to the idea that we are post- identity, post-Aboriginality by examining the ongoing presence of such themes in our contemporary multicultural context. By exploring in detail the challenges to white assumptions of post-Aboriginality, made by Ah Kee and Foley in their works, I have found that there are opportunities for non-Indigenous (white desiring) subjects to interrupt the invisible schemas of power we inhabit. I propose that, in response to such challenges, we need to refocus the terms of debates regarding identity in the arts. This refocusing must come from a critically reflexive reading practice informed by ideas of responsibility to others
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