Menang woman Kiya Watt is making her mark through the transformative power of painting

NAIDOC Week is a celebration of Indigenous Australians, their culture, people, history and achievements. In a historic move, The West Australian will each day feature an Aboriginal West Australian who is making a difference for the community and share their story with our readers. Never before has The West Australian — or any Australian newspaper or magazine — featured Aboriginal people on the cover each day for a week. From a trailblazer in the arts sector and one of the nation’s Indigenous male models to two emerging Indigenous artists using their art for a bigger purpose, this special series is highlighting the achievements of young Aboriginal people during a week all about Indigenous excellence. Kiya Watt may have flunked art at school but the impact of her creations is being felt across the nation. The Menang artist is the co-creator of the famous Kiya doll, which debuted on Play School in 2019. Kiya is a Noongar doll and her presence on the Australian children’s show has delighted Aboriginal children all over Australia and given them some much-needed representation in children’s television. “As soon as it was announced, I got like 50 phone calls from all these different radio stations — my (social media) followers went up to over 10,000,” Watt says. “It was just crazy because when I was going through it, it was so stressful. I didn’t realise how much impact it would make.” Watt was later inundated with messages asking for collaborations. One of her biggest projects to date has been working with self-proclaimed “Queen of Bling” Kristy Dickson, whose Aboriginal jewellery label, Haus of Dizzy, counts Drew Barrymore, Miranda Tapsell and Lauryn Hill as fans. The two worked together on a special line of earrings representing the six Noongar seasons. It’s been a sharp turnaround for Watt who, despite her talent, didn’t do well at art in high school. “Because I struggled with my identity and I had really low self-esteem and I was really bad in school, I was just not present,” the 28-year-old explains. “I got all Ds in art, I hated sitting down. I never ever did any kind of art.” Watt says throughout her childhood she struggled with her identity and the racism within her community didn’t help. “My parents separated and Dad raised me on his own,” she says. “I feel like Dad always raised us to be proud, but then he wasn’t very open about it. I guess our subconscious knew it was a thing to be ashamed about and kind of try as hard as you can to fit in and meet society’s expectations of what you need to be.” Watt would often skip school and her early teens she turned to drugs and alcohol. “Schooling for me became so difficult. By Year 8, I was rebelling, turning to drugs and alcohol. I still felt so much shame. Racism was everywhere, even enriched throughout the school curriculum.” Then she fell pregnant and, at 17, gave birth to twin boys. “It was definitely hard and I was a little woman, so I thought I knew it all, but I became really isolated and went into government housing and I didn’t have a licence,” she says. “I remember one time the mailman came and I was like, ‘Can I just use your phone to send one message?’ because I had no food and I felt really stranded.” The then-teen mum began to detach herself from her friends and family and although she wasn’t diagnosed, looking back she believes she had postpartum depression. Watt says she didn’t know how to cope. At that time, she was not doing art and turned to partying and alcohol to cope with the struggles of being a young mum. “I had low self-esteem and I started partying a bit,” she says. “I was just trying to do what everyone else was doing. “I drank on the weekends, I used the wrong coping mechanisms, I didn’t really pull myself out of it until I started painting.” Her love of art came to the fore when her sons turned to her for a school project for NAIDOC Week. “I uploaded it to Facebook and people were like, ‘Can we buy it?’ and I was like, ‘This is just a school project, I can’t paint’.” For Watt, who was in her second abusive relationship and had welcomed another child, painting became her new coping mechanism. “When I first started painting, I was in an abusive relationship, so painting really saved me in so many ways,” she says. “I started the healing and grieving process properly. “I feel like I was kind of dealing with depression until then.” Painting helped Watt heal and process her trauma but it also helped establish her career. She acknowledges that she still has a long way to go but her passion for Indigenous art and protecting other Indigenous artists has led her to team up with Wiradjuri woman Jarin Baigent — owner of Jarin Street. Watt describes Baigent as a “staunch woman”, with whom she shared a “strong bond”. The two women, alongside several others, launched Trading Blak on Instagram at the start of last year. “Baigent was fed up, like me, about the cultural appropriation that was happening throughout the Aboriginal business sector, such as non-Aboriginal businesses trading in culture and marketing their brands in a way that misleads consumers to believe they are Aboriginal owned,” Watt says. “This becomes problematic because they can use black cladding strategies to get funding, appropriate our culture and art without community accountability, employ artists, and use the law to gain ownership of their copyright, which then strips Indigenous artists of their rightful income and royalties .” Their followers have grown to almost 50,000 but the platform is also transitioning into a business promoting authentic 100 per cent-owned Aboriginal brands, while also calling out brands for cultural appropriation. “It’s frustrating when you call them out about it — they get a bit defensive. It’s like, I’m not even coming at you, I’m just telling you that it’s inappropriate,” Watt says. “There definitely needs to be more education around, so people understand it’s not an attack.” Trading Blak recently launched its own website and Watt hopes to bring a pop-up store to WA in the future.

Menang woman Kiya Watt is making her mark through the transformative power of painting

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