The 2023 exhibition Blak Power brought more than a dozen First Nations artists together around Aboriginal superheroes, self-representation and the people who carry strength within communities.
Presented at the Northern Centre for Contemporary Art in Darwin, the exhibition took the 1973 television programme Basically Black as an important historical starting point.
From Super Boong to contemporary comics
Basically Black was the first Australian television programme performed by an all-Indigenous cast and created with First Nations writers and producers.
Its satirical character Super Boong became the first Indigenous-made superhero on Australian television.
Fifty years later, artists used comics, photography, painted masks and other media to develop characters outside stereotypes imposed by non-Indigenous creators.
Wapabara artist Jonathan Saunders created the comic Zero Point from his experience as an urban Aboriginal man.
Community women and cultural knowledge as superpowers
Balanggarra and Yolngu artist Molly Hunt presented strong Aboriginal women as the true heroes in her life.
Ray Mudjandi contributed painted superhero masks.
Tony Albert worked with children in Warakurna, allowing them to embody their own ideas of power through photography.
Albert connected superhero narratives with Aboriginal creation stories and argued that helping elders or retaining culture could be understood as extraordinary capacities.
Blak Power shifted the superhero away from imported fantasy alone.
The exhibition showed heroism through family, culture, survival, humour and community responsibility, while insisting that Indigenous characters should be shaped by Indigenous artists drawing on their own distinct countries and experiences.