Mia van Dort-Gilmore

13. Mia van Dort Gilmore, Queen Elizabeth’s 1981 visit to Sri Lanka, 2024, screenprint, 38 x 58 cm. NFS

This work interrogates hierarchical systems of class and race through an archival image of Queen Elizabeth’s 1981 visit to Sri Lanka. By duplicating and cropping the sourced image, the printmaking process exposes systemic structures that have informed cultural erasure and silences within historical narratives. The interplay of poetic language drawn from imagery and  cultural memory engages with the familiar and unfamiliar—represented by the fragmented figures presented in the moment of “exchange” of a metal elephant-shaped vessel between a Sri Lankan woman's hands to the tailored gloves worn by Queen Elizabeth, a colonial figure.

Mia van Dort-Gilmore is a recent graduate from the National Art School. Majoring in Printmaking, her practice investigates cultural memory, identity politics, and post-colonial experiences. Raised on Gadigal land, with a heritage rooted in Sri Lanka, she approaches her work with a commitment to understanding and navigating her intersectional identity within a colonial space.

Van Dort-Gilmore works extensively with printmaking methodologies that engage with themes of 'copy' and 'trace' — echoing the endurance of memory and tradition within modern, often fragmented narratives. Focusing on the intersectional experience presented within a cultural discourse, van Dort-Gilmore aims to recontextualise archival imagery, encouraging dialogues between past and present, reinvested with meaning, and shared with broader audiences. She is eager to expand her technical and conceptual practice in a setting where art functions both as a personal and collective vehicle of expression and cultural preservation.