RAISING VOICES
There are vital voices of change out there speaking – and there is much power in listening. Those leading the charge in Australia, pushing for inclusion and equality for all, are numerous, and they come from diverse backgrounds and experiences from all over the country. For this issue, we invited some of these women, who are all creatives but also vocal and confident voices for change, to capture a portrait of themselves that reflects who they are and the way they want to be seen in the wake of conversations that grew from the Black Lives Matter movement.
Coming together across different disciplines – from music, dance, fashion and the arts – they share an ability to express themselves through their chosen mediums, but also powerfully using their own voices. As on page 30, which highlighted self-generated Vogue covers created by readers on social media under the hashtag #VogueChallenge, these images are also in the spirit of self-representation. They speak of future possibilities if we all move for change. Putting their creativity to task, they worked in partnership, sometimes with friends, sometimes with regular collaborators, and even family members, to create their portrait, with their hand in the locations, the clothes – the who, how and why. Beside this, each individual shares how the Black Lives Matter movement can be a catalyst for real and lasting progress, the kind of future they envisage, and how we can work side by side to arrive there together, united.
ARETHA BROWN, 19
ARTIST AND ACTIVIST
IN HER OWN WORDS:
“I would call myself an artist, and at the moment that term is quite vague, because I do a bit of painting and drawing and sculpture. I’m doing filmmaking at the moment. So just straight up creative with an emphasis on teaching First Nations history, as well as an activist. Those things for me are quite synonymous – being an activist and being an artist – because the message of both of those things is being a storyteller. That’s how I practise my activism. It’s telling my story and telling my truth, and it’s up to people to take it whichever way they want it. I know that I know my own story and my existence as a teenage Aboriginal girl is [something] we don’t hear about at all, considering that it is my country. If you wanted to give it a big label, I’d be a storyteller, but activist art is what I do.”
On this time as a period of change:
“You focus on this stuff your whole life and then overnight people side with you, which was brilliant, but I couldn’t help but feel a little bit like we needed this all along. Since 1788, Aboriginal people have been fighting for equality here in Australia and it felt very sudden. I know now that it’s all very well intentioned, but at the time it was definitely overwhelming and it was a bit much. I was nervous that it might have been somewhat of just what was on-trend at the time and that eventually it would die down again, which it hasn’t.
“It has to just be a big a snowball rolling down a hill, for lack of a better analogy. It has to keep getting bigger and bigger and it has to lead to something. And what I’ve had to learn as well during this time is at the heart of the Black Lives Matter movement, I would argue, it’s for white
