Clinton Naina

Clinton Naina, formerly Clinton Nain, is an urban Indigenous multidisciplinary artist working across painting, photography, printmaking, installation, performance, dance and storytelling. He is a descendant of the Meriam Mer people of the eastern Torres Strait and the Ku Ku people of Cape York, with Danish and Irish ancestry on his father’s side.

Born in Carlton, Melbourne, in 1971, Naina grew up in a family deeply connected to art and activism. His mother, Eleanor Harding, was a political activist and community service worker; his sister Destiny Deacon is a renowned artist; and his sister Janina Harding is an arts leader and former Artistic Director of the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair. Naina attended his first land rights protest at one month old and was present at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra on 26 January 1972. These early experiences shaped his lifelong engagement with Indigenous sovereignty, survival and resistance.

As an abstract painter, Naina works with domestic and industrial materials, including heritage house paint, bitumen and household bleach, to interrogate the language, religion, land claims and symbols of colonial power. He came to prominence in the late 1990s with White King, Blak Queen, a series using bleach and bitumen to confront the legacy of British settlement and imposed religion on Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal peoples. His work has been described as pointed and strong, yet poignant and witty, balancing critique with cultural presence and resilience.

Naina completed an Advanced Certificate of the Arts at Northern Metropolitan College of TAFE in 1991, before graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Art in Painting from the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, in 1994, becoming the first Indigenous graduate from its School of Fine Arts in Painting. He completed a Master of Fine Art by Research at COFA, University of New South Wales, in 2003.

Naina has exhibited and performed nationally and internationally, with work held in major public and private collections including the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, and state, regional, tertiary, corporate and private collections in Australia and abroad.