Stories about: race
A small plaque outside the IGA includes a photo of a couple with an inscription, which reads: “The only known image of ‘Denmark’ Aboriginals 1898.
From Archer Magazine #13, the FIRST NATIONS issue, SJ Norman chats about their artistic practices and work as a Blak and trans artist.
Blends of blues and greens shimmered back up at me from the palm of my hand. Lightly brushing sand off little pearlescent jewels, I looked into what was very recently a home for a little saltwater friend, but was now lying in the company of many other colours and shapes. Every trip to the beach …
I began to think about how my experiences have been shaped by the spatial absence of queer Aboriginal peoples in regional Aboriginal communities.
Franz Kafka’s seminal literary work, The Metamorphosis, has crept into my world at three crucial points. It’s tangled with my psyche and influenced the course of my life as an observer, a performer and a writer. I was a naïve and impressionable thirteen-year-old student at an all-boys high school on Sydney’s Northern Beaches when first …
Asian Ambition is a movement and platform designed to highlight Asian artists, embrace Asian sub-cultures in all their complexities, and negate the stereotypes propagated by the media of Asian people being timid, stoic and academically excellent. I’d followed the Asian Ambition account for a few months and their previous photoshoots always left me feeling grateful …
Meryl McMaster is a Canadian artist and a graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design University (OCAD U). Through her distinct approach to photographic portraiture and self-portraiture, she explores questions of identity in relation to land, lineage, history and culture. Her work has been included in exhibitions throughout Canada and internationally, including the National …
Midsumma Festival is Australia’s premier queer arts and cultural festival, bringing together a diverse mix of LGBTQIA+ artists, performers, communities and audiences from 19 Jan to 9 Feb 2020. Midsumma Festival is a proud supporter of Archer Magazine. FAMILI is a collaborative electronic music project highlighting contemporary artists from Pasifika and First Nation communities. Arising from …
When Uncle Jack Charles appeared on a 2015 episode of Q&A, he took the opportunity to point out to Australian viewers the ways in which the country is uniquely and peculiarly racist towards its First Nations peoples. It’s something he has experienced and seen, a lot, firsthand. His words resonated strongly. The beloved actor, trailblazer, Indigenous-theatre pioneer, …
Based in the U.S, Raquel Willis is a Black queer transgender trailblazer backed by a formidable CV, with her work in community organising to lift up the voices of other marginalised people evident in her work over the years.
Western constructions of gender and sexuality can be restrictive for individuals who are Fa’afafine, whose identity goes beyond the binary. Amao Leota Lu, as told to Bobuq Sayed, former Archer Magazine co-editor and deputy online editor. Anxiety levels for trans and gender-diverse people are high. It used to be about sexuality stuff, but people still don’t …
“Did you know that Madison is a… bisexual?” my aunt harps during the heart of Australia’s ill-famed plebiscite debate in 2017, locking eyes with my mother as she mouths the word. The transgression, rather. Bi-sex-ual (|bʌɪˈsɛkʃʊəl|): something that is neither here nor there, a kind of “duplicity” that Iranian-American filmmaker Desiree Akhavan knows well. “You’re …
To celebrate my resignation from my first full-time job after college, I booked a flight from the Philippines to Singapore for a break. I brought one bag with me for a month-long stay. When I landed I realised how reckless my decision was. I had no idea what I was going to do there. I …
Dashaun Wesley, the King of Vogue, sat down with Archer Magazine recently to chat all things ball culture and voguing.
Faluda Islam is a Muslim bearded drag queen turned revolutionary from the middle of the 21st century, most likely from this world but perhaps even another.
Now in his 50s, Peter Waples-Crowe is a powerhouse community figure in the Aboriginal LGBT community, managing a career in public health alongside a significant body of visual art that reflects his unique intersections. After catching up over cigarettes outside the State Library of Victoria, and reflecting on the sombre irony of smoking tobacco products …
A good friend of mine recently asked me to write a piece on the way that depression has impacted my life for a friend’s blog. Thinking about it, I came to realize that the psychological illnesses I have incurred over the years are situated within the history of postcolonial trauma. My ancestral heritage goes back …
At the moment, my partner and I are in the room not going out. We always live in fear. I studied engineering at university. I worked as an elevator technician until I left Iran. I really liked that job. I would like to start my own small business, that is my goal. When I was …
Mama Alto is a gender transcendent diva, cabaret artiste, and community activist. She is a non-binary trans femme person of colour who works with the radical potential of storytelling, strength in softness & power in vulnerability. Bobuq Sayed sat down with them at Hares and Hyenas to talk queerness in the arts and the challenges …
The black family is a contested and colonised concept; my own family has never been a fixed and permanent entity. We have always been ephemeral. Some people are added and some are cut out. I have one mum, but heaps of other mothers. Sometimes, my mum feels like a sister. I have two sisters, but many …
It started early, and had little to do with sexuality. Maybe it was the fact that I hung around with more boys than girls, or that frocks never caught my fancy. But I fought to choose my own clothes, and my family eventually got tired of resisting resistance. My earliest memory was after a bath …
Allan Clarke is a Muruwuri man and an investigative journalist with the ABC. He has previously reported for BuzzFeed, NITV and SBS. The Mardi Gras magazine recently published his article about the First Nations history of Mardi Gras, commemorating 40 years of black queer protest and celebration. How important is the Sydney Mardi Gras …
