Power surge ready to inspire youth at CIAF
MAU Power is using his platform as the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair headline act to encourage more young indigenous artists to showcase their work.
The hip hop artist told the Cairns Post his performance for the act would be second to none.
“It will be an amazing show. There will never be another show like this, ever, ever again. I’m for real,” he said.
Power said he was honoured to be asked to be part of the opening night, because he saw CIAF as a way to encourage more Far Northern youth to take part in the arts.
“I’m working alongside CIAF to be able to build up the next generation of creative artists,” he said.
“It is very important that we have CIAF continually doing that for our young people and are artists.
“Indigenous people don’t have that many platforms, but when we do we want to make sure that we showcase it right.”
He said young people needed to be able to see their culture lifted up in this way in order to grow as people and within their communities.
“We are looking at the next step, to know what the future of creative arts looks like,” he said.
“It’s representing our culture not only in the most creative way, but a chance to represent it in the best way we can. It’s so people have a better understanding of who we are, where we come from and what we do.”
Power said it was a positive step forward to not only have a multi-day event like CIAF, but for it to be so widely supported.
“Most people don’t understand with our culture that it is an obligation that we share our culture anyway,” he said.
“But with new mainstream options, we can allow other people to be involved and to really participate with us. “That’s something special. “For someone like me – I come from a remote community – I want to be able to see young people looking at CIAF as the place to strive to be.”
The theme of this year’s festival is “My Yarn Now”, which puts a focus on ownership of indigenous stories across Far North Queensland.