TRIPLE AXIS INTERSECTIONAL SKATER
Bronze, Lost Wax process, 60cm, 2022.
Image by Marie Pantaleon.
The Ontario Human Rights Commission offers a very simple description of intersectionality: "...multiple forms of discrimination occurring simultaneously".
Pru Goward, Australia’s Sex Discrimination Commissioner (2001-2006) explains further: “By intersectionality; we refer to the connection between aspects of identity, and by ‘intersectional discrimination’ the different types of discrimination or disadvantage that compound on each other and are inseparable’.
While our perception of discrimination expands, in truth it remains systemically entrenched. And for many still, their subsistence through intersecting forms of discrimination against race, gender and sexuality is as much a challenge today as it was prior to the social revolutions of the 20th century.
Triple Axis Intersection Skater is a tribute to those who are still denied the right to free and safe movement in the urban environment. It draws from the themes of visibility and invisibility to ask whose eyes on the street matter? Who’s views count?
By subverting the traditional bronze canon and exposing the bias and prejudice that runs deeply within the established arts community, the sculpture questions who our public spaces are made for. The Skater; the contemporary, female flâneur, is both an affirmation and a reclamation of the right to space. Defying race and class boundaries, she maintains her increasingly rebellious act of movement through environments in which she has been historically, and continues to this day, unjustly policed, scrutinised and barred from.
Images by Meg Keene.
Original Version
This enlargement was made from a digital scan that was printed using ecological plant materials at twice the original size and re-worked by hand by Leonie. A mould was made from this re-worked print and cast into bronze.
An original 30cm version of Triple-Axis intersectional Skater is installed permanently in Winn Lane, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane.
Images by Joseph W Lynch.