Appropriating Today

The Deaf community was recently in 2020 outraged when Andy Dexterity, a hearing man decided to perform the song 'Imagine' by John Lennon on The Voice using Auslan. The background story is Andy has hardly had anything to do with the Deaf community, barely learnt much Auslan (and before anyone thinks about defending him, think about our Deaf culture and language and how it is used) and he did not want to include a Deaf person in his performance (the rules of Deaf culture is, no hearing person, not even an interpreter is allowed to perform using our language) and he went ahead and performed, and he performed, signing most of the signs incorrectly. Auslan is a full signing language and is not the same as English. Andy spoke and signed at the same time, and basically culturally appropriated our language. He used our language for his own benefit for fame. A Deaf person could have gotten on stage and sung that song in sign.
​
Chelle played two characters in her performance, one of herself as the Deaf person, and as Andy.

​Sample of the video installation on textile in video below

​




​This artwork creation was supported by a grant from the Australia Council of the Arts