Code Black/Riot reviewed - The Guardian
- Apr 29
- 1 min read
Among the biennale’s most powerful works is a collaborative project by Kurdish Iranian journalist and author Behrouz Boochani, Iranian Australian artist Hoda Afshar and Kuku Yalandji/Waanji/Yidinji/Gugu Yimithirr artist Vernon Ah Kee, focusing on the experiences of Indigenous youth in detention. At Campbelltown Arts Centre, a darkened gallery space is devoted to the four-channel video installation Code Black/Riot, featuring the testimonials of former staff members and child inmates of a facility in north Queensland.
These accounts – which reveal both the harrowing and banally evil details of detention – are intercut with footage of the facility’s foreboding exterior and surveillance system; the natural landscape; and dreamy sequences of young people bouncing in slow motion on trampolines and in repose on country – floating in the river, perched in trees. Surrounded by screens, the viewer is alternately uncomfortably enclosed and bracingly immersed; confronted with different truths and realities.
Code Black/Riot harnesses poetic imagery and raw testimony to convey both the humanity of its young subjects, and the inhumanity of Australia’s detention system. In a photo series from the same project, exhibited at the Chau Chak Wing Museum, Afshar collaborated with Indigenous youth to stage striking portraits, giving them a rare and powerful opportunity to represent themselves within an institutional space.
Nearby, a deceptively bright colour-field painting by Ah Kee contains barely perceptible text, with the phrases in each colour bar corresponding to the different levels of alert in the detention facility – from Code Blue for “medical emergency” to Code Black for “riot”. Only by shifting perspective can viewers understand the work.
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