Tracey Moffatt
Curated by Greg de Cuir Jr
about the artist
Tracey Moffatt (Australia) is an artist and filmmaker born in Brisbane in 1960. Moffat is of Aboriginal Australian heritage. She is recognized for revolutionizing global photographic practice at the end of the 20th century, and is one the most innovative contemporary artists working today. Her stylistically diverse body of films and photographic works explore childhood memories and broader issues of race, gender, class, sexuality, and identity. She received a BA in visual communications from the Queensland College of Art (1982). Her work has been the subject of over 100+ solo exhibitions in Australia, Europe, and the United States, and has been widely exhibited at festivals, museums and galleries internationally, including The Museum of Modern Art, Cannes Film Festival, Stedelijk Museum, Mori Art Museum, Dia Art Foundation, Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art, Australian Centre for Photography, Prague Biennale, Kunsthalle Wien, São Paulo Biennial, MoMA PS1, Haus der Kunst, Museum of Contemporary Art Rome, Brooklyn Museum, Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Spazio Oberdan, Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Hasselblad Center, Biennale of Sydney, Tyler Rollins Fine Art, Royal Academy London, and the Guggenheim Museum. She represented Australia at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017). She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Infinity Award for Excellence in Photography, International Center for Photography (2007); Australia Council Visual Arts Award (2013); and an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain (2020). She also holds an honorary doctorate from Queensland College of Art (2004). She is the subject of numerous publications, including The Moving Images of Tracey Moffatt, a major monograph dedicated to her film and photographic practice, published by Charta (2007). Her work is in public and private collections internationally, including Centre Pompidou, Tate Modern, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Yale Center for British Art, Museum of Modern Art, and the National Gallery of Australia, among many others. She lives and works between Sydney, Australia and New York.
Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy (1990)
Tracey Moffatt
Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy Tracey Moffatt Australia 35mm > digital19 min1990
A dazzling grand opera of silence and maternity, as opulent as Robert Wilson, as soulfully anguished as Fassbinder. – Manohla Dargis
On an isolated, surreal Australian homestead, a middle-aged Aboriginal woman nurses her dying white mother. The adopted daughter’s attentive gestures mask an almost palpable hostility. Their story alludes to the assimilation policy that forced Aboriginal children to be raised in white families. The stark, sensual drama unfolds without dialogue against vivid painted sets as the smooth crooning of an Aboriginal Christian singer provides ironic counterpoint. Moffatt’s first 35mm film displays rare visual assurance and emotional power. – Women Make Movies
Streaming Details
This film is available to stream globally.
Program Partners
This film is co-presented with Women Make Movies and Three Fold Press.
Image credits: all artworks, stills, and portraits courtesy of the artist © Tracey Moffat and Women Make Movies.
Nice Colored Girls (1987)
Tracey Moffatt
Nice Colored Girls Tracey Moffatt Australia16mm > digital 16 min1987
With humour, elegance, and finesse, Tracey Moffatt brilliantly deconstructs the classic good girl/bad girl dichotomy in a game of seduction, symbolic violence, and illusions. – Bérénice Reynaud
This stylistically daring film by Tracey Moffatt audaciously explores the history of exploitation between white men and Aboriginal women, juxtaposing the “first encounter” between colonizers and native women with the attempts of modern urban Aboriginal women to reverse their fortunes. – Women Make Movies
Through allegory, experimental techniques, and a witty use of voice-over, artist Tracey Moffat subverts the colonial gaze in this short about three young Australian Aboriginal women out on the town with a “captain.” – MoMA
Streaming Details
This film is available to stream globally.
Program Partners
This film is co-presented with Women Make Movies and Three Fold Press.
Image credits: all artworks, stills, and portraits courtesy of the artist © Tracey Moffat and Women Make Movies.