About

ARTIST BIO

Mars Drum was born on Wotjobaluk country, Australia.

Art running deep through the female bloodlines on both sides of the family, Mars knew early in life that Art was her guiding star. 

Mars left home at eighteen to spend the next few decades "living the artful life". This included six years of art residencies and extensive travel in Europe and Asia, and many more years obsessively videoing Melbourne’s fringe arts and counter-cultural happenings, while also undertaking a diverse range of experimental community and public art projects and residencies.

Drum’s ongoing visual arts series “The True History of Ned Kelly and Burka Woman” is a contemporary investigation of Australia’s cultural history and identity, and has been exhibited, short-listed, and reviewed positively both nationally and internationally since 2006.

Drum returned to live on Wotjobaluk country in 2012, and continues to live her artful life in Watchegatcheca / Dimboola.

The True History of Ned Kelly and Burka Woman

In response to the effects of the 9/11 USA attacks in 2001, and the subsequent negative characterisation of Muslims being delivered to Australians by the reactionary Howard government and mainstream media, I took to wearing a burqa when out and about in Melbourne - including regular street rallies, art openings, CD launches, music gigs and parties. It was an experimental gesture of sympathy towards the Islamic women of Melbourne who were being misbranded as "terrorists" post 9/11, but it unexpectedly became my preferred choice of garment for several years. 

In December 2001, with Australia joining the US-lead military invasion of Afghanistan, I found myself painting war scenes on small canvases... women in burqas fleeing across desert sand dunes, pursued by Australian military tanks, women in black burqas on their knees clutching their dead babies...  I titled this series “A True Story”.
One day in 2002, Australia's favourite bush outlaw Ned Kelly landed beside the wartorn Burka Woman on my canvas, and so began a new series: “A Love Story”.

Two persecuted fugitives...hiding out from extremist authorities who would have them killed for the colour of their skin, their heritage, gender, beliefs, and unyielding will to survive…. Burka and Ned have spent the next two and a half decades as inseparable companions, undertaking a survey of Australian culture in my ongoing art series re-titled in 2008 as “The True History of Ned Kelly and Burka Woman”.

March 2022 exhibition: “Eyeseeyou” 

"Ned and Burka help me process my own transmutations and responses within the seismic context of an imploding nation and planet. I just want to smash all the existing regressive societal constructs that limit who we are and can be. 

See how Ned and Burka now merge, overlap, transition, shift shapes colours moods... uniting in heartache and love, hope and loss...the Eyeseeyou series includes eyes that see you and each other clearly as one race. 

We are one race. We're the human race.