Projects

An Anmatyerre elder and lifelong custodian of women’s ‘dreaming’ sites in her clan country of Alhalkere, Emily Kame Kngwarreye (1910–1996) developed an abstract visual language centred around ancestral spirits and Australian Aboriginal cosmology.

Fathi Hassan explores the colonial erasure of ancient languages and oral histories as well as the ambivalence and fallibility of semiotic meaning.

An elder of the Wangkajunga people and respected custodian of its women’s law, Eubena Nampitjin (1921–2013) utilised her knowledge of Aboriginal ceremonies to produce large-scale canvases that reflect the strength of her Aboriginal culture and community.

Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum’s boundary-defying practice attempts to transfigure notions of power and agency for Black subjectivity within systems that would otherwise dismiss the complexity and nuances of its cultural and intellectual histories.

Combining ancient mythology with modern history, Nilima Sheikh draws on diverse narrative and visual layering to compose symbolic dramaturgies and ephemeral landscapes dealing with themes of migration, exile, tradition and poetry.

In her bodies of work, Sangeeta Sandrasegar constructs a continuous narrative centred upon the relationships of migrant communities to their homelands.

Queenie McKenzie (1915–1998) depicted the Aboriginal experience through bold autobiographical canvases that offer insight into life on the remote cattle stations of the East Kimberley region in early twentieth-century Australia.

Natalie Ball investigates histories of Native American symbolism in dialogue with contemporary Indigenous iconography to propose alternative definitions of Native life.

Brenda Fajardo is a painter, printmaker, community organiser and art educator whose practice began to take shape in the midst of the Marcos dictatorship, an era in which critics of the Filipino regime were consigned to detention, torture or disappearance.

Hanni Kamaly’s multidisciplinary, research-driven practice examines material culture, historiography, collective memory, colonial power structures and the bounds of subjectivity to consider questions of memory and commemoration, embodied narratives, attention and agency.

Mame-Diarra Niang’s photographic work abstracts, fragments and decontextualises landscapes and portraits relating to her ancestral roots and Senegalese- Ivorian-French upbringing. Niang’s interrelated photographic series dwell on memory, selfhood and race.

At the intersection of art and activism, Hank Willis Thomas’ work reframes material from contemporary consumer culture and histories of colonialism, shedding light on the legacy
of oppressive systems and stereotypes.

Archana Hande reflects on the nuances of growing up in the shadow of colonialism in India and the reproduction of power through industrialisation.

Nil Yalter’s works offer a compelling feminist viewpoint on the socioeconomic conditions that affect migratory populations and female labourers.