Zane Saunders : CURE
performance art installation + VR / 360° recording
Zane Saunders is a contemporary performance artist of Australian Aboriginal heritage. His enigmatic CURE performance art work speaks to an ideal moral compass represented by the right and the wrong rainbow. The rainbow is a spiritual symbol for Aboriginal people frequently identified by invoking the Rainbow Serpent of traditional lore.
Zane's rainbow metaphor has developed as large scale mechanical devices, a species of a large machine capable of moving the performer through space in sweeping arcs. The external movement of these machine forms have articulated angles that consume space in sweeps up to 10 metres in diameter. They are performative devices that transport the artists body whose internal actions reside in stillness and minimal symbolic gestures.
The performance art reveals Zane's iconography as a conflict between Western theological principles and Indigenous spiritual grounding. His stillness and pointing gestures accompany small objects and artefacts laden with symbolic references to personal experiences representing his familial place on Earth. CURE is a profound reflection on an Indigenous worldview and a meditation on the vitality of positive and negative energy held in the forms of the right and wrong rainbow. The performance does not float along a narrative arc; instead offers a ritualised experience. It is an invocation indicative of the perplexity inherent in contemporary Indigenous spirituality.
artist:
Zane Saunders
producer and 360° video: Russell Milledge
sponsors:
Cairns Indigenous Art Fair | Bonemap | Bulmba-ja: Arts Queensland
Video documentation:
