Making Multicultural Australia - Vera Zulumovski

Vera Zulumovski says her work reflects her rethinking and exploration of her background, after growing up as the child of Macedonian migrants, and the constantly changing sense of identity this entailed. Newcastle-based Zulumovski says “by looking at the life of my ancestors, I am able to more clearly and confidently comprehend my identity, therefore my present and future.” Her work portrays aspects of the migrant experience and shows Macedonian rituals and customs, often against an Australian background.

“Self Portrait in Naroden Costume,” lino, “I frequently listen to my mother and aunties fondly recalling the ritual that went with dressing in their national costume. The proper sequence of dressing, the particular style and the certain elaborate features that distinguished theirs from the villages in the surrounding area. They always talk about the time after World War Two when some people visited all the villages and bought up most of the costumes, to sell in the nineties for extraordinary prices. Needless to say I don’t have one. Yet I pine less now I have a visual image of what it might look like if I did.”

“Three Eligible Daughters” linocut, National Gallery of Australia Collection. “Each of my three aunties at some time during my formative years had played a role as caretaker for me and my siblings. They were the ones with the stories about places far away and long ago, about bears in the woods which ate small children and wolves which walked upright and spoke like humans. They were the ones who convinced me that the dark shapes on the moon’s surface were the edges of my maternal grandmother’s skirt, who lived in the same place the stories came from. It was my aunties’ world of imagination I lived in during that time, and it is with the same affection they told those stories to me, that for them I made this print as homage.”

“Sediments of Time” lino, “This is a narrative representation of the recent and ancient history of my ancestors, displayed in an urn shaped archeological dig. It displays certain features of a site very near to where my parents were born, of an ancient city called Heraclare dating back to the 4 th century BC. On the top sediment there are features of more recent Macedonian history, represented by monuments and buildings erected during the Ottoman Empire and after the first and second world wars.”

“The Godmother” lino, “In an orthodox wedding ceremony, the Godparent plays the most important role. He or she marries the couple by exchanging the set of crowns they wear for the service. Godparents are usually distant relatives or close friends and remain an important part of the couple’s life. In most families they have already had a close association as godparents for the groom’s parents or his male siblings, and often the two families have been associated in this relationship for generations. In this case the granddaughter of my deceased godfather has taken up the role.”

These images are free for your use for educational purposes, however not for publication. For more copyright information go to