Tracey Moffatt

The theatrical work of renowned Australian photographer and filmmaker Tracey Moffatt investigates various manifestations of race, childhood trauma and popular culture.  Visually striking and stylistically diverse, Moffatt creates tableaus using elaborate costuming, actors and Hollywood-style lighting, challenging stereotypes and depictions of Aboriginal people. In one project, Scared for Life, Moffatt depicts the violence, neglect, and psychological turmoil of childhood, in the format of faded Time magazine pages. Moffatt also gained international attention with her 1989 film Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy, which investigated both national and personal history through the complexities of the deathbed relationship between an aboriginal woman and her white foster mother. Her work based on what she refers to as “memory theatre,” and continues to expand artistic notions of identity, social politics and the role of the Aboriginal artist in a marginalized world.

Solo exhibitions of Moffatt's work have been organized by the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney, Artpace, San Antonio, DIA Center for the Arts, New York, Kunsthalle Vienna, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal. Her works have also been included in important group exhibitions like the Sydney Biennial (1993, 2000, and 2008) Venice Biennale (1997), São Paulo Bienal (1996 and 1998), Prague Biennale (2005), the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York and the 2008 Liverpool Biennial. In 2007 she was awarded the Infinity Award for Excellence in Photography by the International Center for Photography in New York. Moffatt lives and works in New York.