Two boys play beside railway tracks in an Indian slum, unaware that where they were born could determine the opportunities available to them.
To Swan local artist Ryan Michael, they are no different from his own son.
Their story is one of 12 told through oil portraits in his exhibition, ‘Inequality’, which explores poverty, unemployment, healthcare, displacement and loneliness.
Ryan said the idea came from his visits to India, where the contrast between wealth and poverty was difficult to ignore.
“You can see a luxury home with a Ferrari in the driveway sitting almost alongside a slum where people don’t have basic sanitation or adequate shelter,” he said.
However, inequality is also something Ryan experienced growing up.
His family migrated from India to Australia in 1992 when he was 12, leaving behind a comfortable middle-class life.
His father, a former Indian Navy officer, struggled to find work, while his mother’s teaching qualifications were not initially recognised.
“We went from having a maid in India to my mother becoming a maid in Australia just to make ends meet,” he said.
“That experience was a huge shock to me as a teenager. In a very short space of time, I saw both sides of the socioeconomic divide.”
Those experiences stayed with him and influenced his approach to the exhibition.
Rather than choosing faces, Ryan selected stories that he felt deserved to be told.
Some subjects were people he had met, while others came from photographs and stories shared by family and friends.
“I wasn’t interested in creating a catalogue of suffering,” he said.
“I wanted to find the humanity within each story and use it to say something bigger about society.”
One of the paintings that means the most to him depicts two boys living beside railway tracks, which have become their playground.
“They aren’t fundamentally different from my own son. The biggest difference is simply where they were born,” he said.
Ryan said another memorable moment came when a woman who had escaped a violent marriage recognised her own experiences in a portrait of a young girl.
Although he had painted the girl with a different story in mind, the woman saw something of herself in the artwork.
“I painted that girl with one story in mind, but she saw her own story in the painting,” he said.
Federal Member for Swan Zaneta Mascarenhas, who visited the exhibition, said Ryan’s work encouraged important conversations about fairness.
“Ryan’s work isn’t just designed to be looked at. It’s designed to provoke conversation,” she said.
Ryan said he had been particularly encouraged by the reactions of children, who wanted to understand why inequality existed and what could be done about it.
“Perhaps the answer to ‘who is looking out for them?’ is all of us,” he said.
“Not because one person can solve inequality, but because change starts when we stop looking away.”
Following its run at Manning Primary School, ‘Inequality’ is on display at the Indian Society of WA in Willetton from October 12 to 17, between 10.30am and 4.20pm daily.
It will then move to the Rod Evans Community Centre in East Perth on October 18, from 4pm to 8pm.
