Lauren Jones - Aduk

Artwork Description:

I created my work with acrylic paints on artists paper, using coloured and graphite pencil to add extra colour and details such as the tiled floor. One of the greatest challenges of this piece was translating the low quality black-and-white photocopy into a detailed coloured portrait while remaining faithful to the original image and maintaining Aduk’s likeness. The book that my painting will serve as the cover of will not only tell her story, but will be used as a fundraising tool for the Lost Children of Jonglei Scholarships project that Aduk founded. LCOJ Scholarships funds vulnerable young people of a South Sudanese background who currently still live in Kakuma Refugee Camp to attend a Kenyan high school (otherwise they'd have no education beyond the equivalent of our Year 8).

Artist Statement:

Aduk is an acrylic and pencil recreation of a photograph of Aduk Dau, a South Sudanese refugee who has been living in Australia for the past 25 years, taken in Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya the night before she came to Australia in 1999. As a result of the civil unrest and war in South Sudan, Aduk and many like her fled on foot to neighbouring countries. She spent some time in Ethiopia, but its own civil war caused refugees to flee again. After a brief time back in the southern region of Sudan, she walked to Kenya and ended up in the brand-new Kakuma Refugee Camp in the early 1990s. Aduk lived there and was granted asylum to live in Australia in 1999. I was commissioned by her co-publisher to recreate the photograph as a painting for the cover of her book, Aduk’s Story, as the original copy has been lost and she only has a black-and-white photocopy, which I used as my primary reference image. I aimed to convey a tone of hope and resilience, while providing context through details like her too-small shoes, reflective of her limited material possessions during that time.