Atong Atem is a South Sudanese writer and artist from Bor, who lives and works in Narrm (Melbourne), Australia. She and her community have long been the subject of racism and hysteria from others in Australia, and her photography and film work is often aimed at capturing the country’s migrant community on their own terms, rather than through the eyes of another. She’s previously collaborated with Melbourne’s immigration museum—housed in the same building where it would once be decided whether migrants would be allowed to enter the country—to create projects. We discussed “Banksia,” named after the flowers that grow free in the country, a film she created to understand her own feelings on life as a migrant, as well as to explore the evolving experience of migrants in the country since the first African men and women arrived on the First Fleet in 1788.
Stories with Atong Atem