Knowledge institutions such as universities and museums have long centralised discussions around history and cultural narratives through collection and contextualisation, separating cultural materials from their origin, purpose and intent. It is a common colonial practice that is still in place today.

How do artists challenge the role of museums in preserving culture and reimagine the act of collecting? Investigating the role contemporary artists have in examining, sampling and reclaiming stories, artists Moorina Bonini, Shivanjani Lal and curator Nanette Orly will discuss archives, art objects and decolonial strategies in each of their own practices.

This event will be Auslan interpreted.

*SOLD OUT* This event will be live-streamed on Facebook. Please follow the Facebook event and Hyphenated Projects for more information. It will be recorded, and made accessible online post-event with closed captions.

About the host

Nanette Orly is a curator based on Wiradjuri country. She has curated exhibitions and public programs across a number of arts organisations in Australia including Firstdraft, The Lock-Up and Bus Projects. She was a successful participant in 4A Curators’ Intensive 2018 program and her writing has appeared in Vault Magazine, Art Guide Australia, un Magazine and Running Dog. She is currently the Assistant Curator at Murray Art Museum Albury (MAMA) and Chairperson of Runway Journal.

About the speakers

Moorina Bonini is a proud descendant of the Yorta Yorta Dhulunyagen family clan of Ulupna and the Yorta Yorta and Wurundjeri-Woiwurrung Briggs/McCrae family. Moorina is an artist whose works are informed by her experiences as an Aboriginal and Italian woman. Her practice is driven by a self-reflexive methodology that enables the reexamination of lived experiences that have influenced the construction of her cultural identity. By unsettling the narrative placed upon Aboriginal people as a result of colonisation of Aboriginal Australia, Bonini’s practice is based within Indigenous Knowledge systems and brings this to the fore.

Shivanjani Lal is a twice-removed Fijian-Indian-Australian artist. She is a member of the indentured labourer diaspora from the Indian and Pacific oceans, she is tied to a long history of familial movement; her work uses personal grief to account for ancestral loss and trauma. She employs intimate images of family, sourced from photo albums, along with video and images from contemporary to the Asia-Pacific to reconstruct temporary landscapes.

About Hyphenated Biennial

Hyphenated Biennial is a new artist-led project set to connect communities across Melbourne’s West, on the lands of the Kulin Nation. The inaugural edition focuses on dialogues, solidarity and meaningful collaborations between First Nations and Asian diasporic artists. With exhibitions, public programs and online experiences, the project will run from December 2020 to December 2021. Join in on the conversation with Hyphenated Biennial and reframe our views of the world today.

For full program, please visit: http://hyphenatedbiennial.art (website will be live from 4 December 2020)

Hyphenated Projects acknowledges the Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation, on whose land we operate. We pay our respects to their Elders and acknowledge that this land was never ceded and we occupy it as uninvited guests.

Image credit: Shivanjani Lal, Suuruu (2019), Installation view from Like This Incense Your Spirit Must Burn at Bega Valley Regional Gallery, image courtesy of the artist