The concept for Fractured Dreams & Indefinite Scars - an exhibition currently on display at the Museum of Brisbane - began when documentary photographer Tammy Law dug back through her own family’s past.
Tammy is the sister of Benjamin and Michelle Law, and their family were depicted in the SBS TV series The Family Law. They still have trouble talking about what happened.
“They’re just labelled as ‘crimmigrants’; criminals that are immigrants, a term that’s been coined in the last decade, immigrants that have committed a crime,” Tammy tells SBS News.
“My mum sums it up, and that’s why it’s called Indefinite Scars; a scar that’s healed over but then you keep picking at it. That trauma that keeps aggravating.”
Tammy's mother Jenny Phang was pregnant with her when authorities removed Jenny's parents from Australia and sent them back to Hong Kong in 1986. They had overstayed their visa after visiting the family on the Sunshine Coast.
Tammy Law at the Museum of Brisbane. Source: Stefan Armbruster/SBS News
“That’s really traumatising for my mother's siblings because they don’t see themselves as criminals, but they were all very aware a price had to be paid," she says. "But it feels like a constant pain, it’s re-occurring trauma.”
“[Being outspoken], I think, this is a way of moving through this - and using humour. If you look at Ben and Michelle’s work, [they use] black comedy to approach these really deeply traumatic things.”
Tammy has documented the stories of four other families in Queensland that have been impacted by deportation as part of the exhibition.
The exhibition depicts the trauma of several families. Source: Supplied
“Two cohorts are important to me; the fact the largest body of people who are currently being deported are from New Zealand, and that really shook me up, and the second-largest body is refugees,”
“Speaking to these people - I can’t speak for the whole cohort - it feels like they are victims of circumstance.”
Most have no connection to their country of origin; they are New Zealanders deported under the Section 501 character test of the Migration Act, and young asylum seekers from Iran and Sri Lanka on bridging visas who have spent most of their lives in Australia or in Australian detention.
“I want people to ask the question within themselves, ‘Why are these people having these experiences?’ and continue that conversation, even if just internally,” Tammy says.
“Also, if they think, if they were in the situation, how would it affect them? What would happen to you? Question the system they live in. Don’t see them as numbers.”
Below are some of their stories.
Kylie has been deported to New Zealand
She later gravitated towards Aboriginal communities in Cape York where she found acceptance and had five children, one of whom is pictured above. But after being convicted of another minor criminal offence she was deported to New Zealand with her youngest son and banned from returning to Australia.
“This [photograph] is Kylie’s daughter in Gladstone," Tammy says. "Kylie quite openly talks about how it's affected her, her children ... how she lived through so much systemic abuse, through government hands, and is now paying for those experiences.”
“We can do better. Look at how we treat First Nations people and abusing human rights, there’s a big correlation. It’s this constant.”
Baaraan's son is facing deportation to Iran
Forced into marriage at just 14, she soon had three children to an abusive husband. She fled with them to Indonesia in 2010 and made the perilous journey by boat to Australia, but the four were among the very few in their group not to get permanent visas and they have been living in community detention ever since.
Her son was a talented footballer but at age 16 ended up in a youth detention centre and is now in prison in Sydney after being convicted of a criminal offence. He has been told he will be deported.
“Her son ended up - through being in detention so long, and back and forth in the system - he ended up committing a petty crime and in prison, and through this trauma it’s affected her other children and her, and that’s the intergenerational trauma in that family,” says Tammy.
Baaraan’s children do not speak Farsi and have no connection to Iran. She is facing the difficult prospect of returning to Iran with her other children to support her son.
Achuthan could be deported to Sri Lanka
Achuthan, a Tamil man from Sri Lanka, was a child soldier by the age of 13, witnessing the brutalities of civil war. He fled to Australia by boat in 2013 in his mid-20s, landing on Christmas Island before being transferred to Nauru for seven years and was eventually brought to Brisbane under the medevac laws.
He is now in community detention on a bridging visa but has no work or study rights, nor access to Centrelink. Trained in Sri Lanka as a carpenter, he would like to move to regional Australia and start a new life but he lives in limbo.
“Achuthan is a very quiet guy but very known in the community for speaking about what happened and is happening to him,” Tammy says. “Some might think they are not genuine, or they’re not people who are fleeing from really difficult situations, they might see them as people who are breaking a law.”
“I’m just trying to help people see the human experience that we can all empathise with.”
Aaron was deported to New Zealand
Born in New Zealand and adopted in Australia in 1980, Aaron had no idea he did not have citizenship in the place he called home. After an accident in which he lost an eye, and then his job, his house and his confidence, he was jailed for three years for selling drugs.
A first time offender, it was only when he was told he would be deported that he found out he wasn’t an Australian citizen. He is now fighting to return to Australia, to his family and his son’s grave.
"This is Aaron’s sister in Townsville," Tammy says. "The words on the photos are responses to their experience, I really wanted the first-person perspective on the image."
"They’re just labelled as numbers, as ‘crimmigrants’ ... and people are like, ‘they don’t deserve to be here’.”
Jenny Phang's parents were deported to Hong Kong
Jenny Phang (photo not part of exhibition). Source: SBS
They all lived in Noosa and opened a restaurant but Jenny’s family overstayed their visa and authorities acted.
“Mum says, 'you were in my tummy when this all happened', but maybe as kids we knew more than we thought we did,” Tammy says.
“We just remember Mum collecting a lot of things and not being able to let go,” she says of the boxes of her grandparents' possessions that were left behind.
“But then as you come into your formative years, you come to understand this might be a problem, like Mum can’t throw away this old broken cup, so I guess we’ve come to subliminally soak up this trauma.”
Tammy Law: Fractured Dreams & Indefinite Scars is on at the Museum of Brisbane until 18 April.
All photographs from the exhibition were supplied by Tammy Law.
Here's where else you can find our content and follow us:
