Vernon Ah Kee is an Aboriginal artist known for his portraits that explore Aboriginal identity and the Aboriginal experience. In his work "Gaze", he aims to represent Aboriginal people with intelligence, emotion and depth, moving away from romanticized ideas. In his "Unwritten" portraits, Ah Kee depicts Aboriginal people without distinct facial features to represent how they were seen as less than human and denied full humanity. The portraits show Aboriginal people emerging as human but never allowed to fully be so. Ah Kee was born just before the 1967 referendum that granted citizenship to Aboriginal people, and he explores how Aboriginal people were written out of existence in the country's origins and Constitution. In "If I Was White", Ah Kee notes