AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST BOOK REVIEWS Single Reviews (reviewer in parentheses) Remote Avant-Garde: Aboriginal Art under Occupation by Jennifer Loureide Biddle Objects/Histories Series. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. 265 pp. DOI: 10.1111/aman.12866 Rosita Henry James Cook University, Australia Remote Avant-Garde brilliantly revitalizes the literature on Aboriginal art by attending to fascinating experimental art practices and a fresh aesthetics emerging in remote Abo- riginal communities in the Central and Western Deserts of Australia, including in the town camps of Alice Springs. Biddle contextualizes the works of the artists and art collectives she discusses in terms of the continuing im- pact of state intervention in Aboriginal communities, as her provocative subtitle indicates. The art in question was produced under conditions of a massive escalation of state intervention heralded by the Northern Territory National Emergency Response (NTNER) in 2007. The NTNER (also called “the Intervention”) introduced drastic law enforce- ment measures and changes to welfare services, land tenure, and education programs, among other actions, all in response to the Little Children Are Sacred report by the Northern Ter- ritory Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse. The NTNER introduced welfare incentives for school attendance and fostered an increased emphasis on Standard Australian English (SAE) literacy programs in remote com- munities. Biddle’s focus on literacy and her discussion of artworks as evidencing “linguistic ingenuity” and “highly cre- ative strategies of intralingual and biliteracy competencies” must be understood in this context. After an introduction, the nine chapters of the book are organized into three sections: “Biliteracies,” “Haptici- ties,” and “Happenings.” The book concludes with a short epilogue situating the artworks within the more recent po- litical context of 2015, and the continuing “occupation” of Aboriginal lives. Chapter 1, “Humanitarian Imperialism,” appositely con- veys Biddle’s stance on the Intervention. Biddle’s lens is fo- cused on the SAE literacy campaign. She is deeply critical of the neglect of bilingual education, stating that Aboriginal art needs to be appreciated as “a unique form of cultural writing” (p. 35) and as “Indigenous-determined inscription” (p. 37). AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Vol. 119, No. 2, pp. 369–387, ISSN 0002-7294, online ISSN 1548-1433. C  2017 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/aman.12866 The three chapters in “Biliteracies” interrogate the con- cept of literacy by focusing on artworks produced by Tan- gentyere Artists, an Aboriginal community art center in Alice Springs; the paintings of Ngaanyatjarra artist June Walkutjukurr Richards; and the photography of Pitjantjatjara artist Rhonda Unurupa Dick, respectively. Biddle explores the “politics of writing” (p. 89) that these artists convey in their works. “Hapticities,” the second section of the book, focuses on the question of materiality or “touch-based visual aes- thetics” (p. 18). The first chapter in this section concerns Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara fiber artworks by the Tjanpi Desert Weavers. Biddle insightfully interprets Tjanpi, “an introduced experiment in women’s fiber art practice,” as a “vital material politics” (p. 137), challenging the distinction between art and craft. The second chapter of “Hapticities” concerns yurlpa, the Warlpiri term for ochre. Here Biddle addresses the idea of “haptic visuality” regarding the use of ochre in paintings on canvases, boards, and bod- ies. She argues that ochre “incites haptic sensation” linking “human experience directly to the realm of the Ancestral” (p. 153). The final chapter in this section addresses exper- imental animation. It provides an exegesis of the short ani- mation Antanette and Tom (2011), which features soft sculp- tural figures crafted from recycled blankets by artists at the Yarrenyty Arltere Learning Centre. The third and final section of the book, “Happenings,” includes two chapters discussing recent national and inter- national curatorial events. The first chapter examines the Canning Stock Route exhibition, and the other chapter ex- amines the Warburton Arts Project. These chapters address the themes of memory, history, and the politics of creation of the archive. Biddle develops her key points that Aboriginal art is a form of literacy; that it is not representational but existential; and that, in itself, “art is law, truth, history” (p. 186). Biddle provides a sensitive and nuanced presentation and exegesis of remote Aboriginal art as new, experimental, and innovative, yet also traditional. Arguing that “Aboriginal tradition is revealed through experimental practice” (p. 4), she subtly critiques concepts of authenticity and nullifies the oppositions between tradition and modernity, remote