I love you my baby, you are my first born.
I love you my baby, you are my first born, is a two-channel video installation exploring intergenerational trauma and the ongoing effects of the Stolen Generations. The work continues West’s practice of performing simple actions – such as listening, walking and gathering – to connect with the past, present and future. Filmed on Ngarluma Country, I love you my baby, you are my first born follows the artist walking along a shoreline at sunset. West moves slowly but with intention; collecting driftwood, observing the shifting tide, and noticing the marks her footprints leave on the mudflats. Returning to her ancestral land to make this work, I love you my baby, you are my first born represents a personal and artistic rite of passage for the artist. Reconnecting her to Country, as well as to her biological mother and grandmother who were forcibly separated at her mother’s birth, West states, “the work is about imagining a time and place where we might have all lived together: myself, my mum, and my grandmother.”
Found driftwood and metal, two-channel video projection, 11 minutes
Created with the support of FORM Building a state of creativity
Image: Anna Kucera