9th TarraWarra Biennial 2023 focuses on interconnectedness of Australia, Asia and the Great Ocean
The 9th TarraWarra Biennial, presented from 1st April – 16th July 2023, will feature newly commissioned works by 15 artists/artist groups focused on the interconnectedness of the peoples of Australia, Asia and the Great Ocean.
TarraWarra Museum of Art - situated in Healesville, Victoria – has appointed renowned Samoan visual artist, writer, curator and researcher, Dr Léuli Eshrāghi, as the curator for TarraWarra Biennial 2023.
The exhibition is titled ua usiusi faʻavaʻasavili, a Samoan proverb which means ‘the canoe obeys the wind’. The proverb is demonstrative of Great Ocean celestial navigation practices, following centuries of European and Asian colonial occupations.
The TarraWarra Biennial is one of the most anticipated contemporary art exhibitions on the Australian art calendar. It was inaugurated in 2006 in order to identify new trends in contemporary Australian art through an experimental curatorial platform. Each Biennial has developed a distinctive curatorial approach, focusing on a particular set of ideas or themes prevalent in contemporary art.
TarraWarra Biennial 2023: ua usiusi faʻavaʻasavili, focuses attention on contemporary artists tied by ancestry or by materiality to the many lands and waters constituting Australia and its immediate neighbourhood of the soil and watery expanses termed Asia and the Great Ocean.
Revived by Satawalese Master Navigator Mau Piailug among Kānaka ʻŌiwi communities in 1970s Hawaiʻi, celestial navigation practices teach the interconnectedness of humans and islands, reefs, stars, suns, moons, currents, winds and all other beings. Bringing this lens to an exhibition context, TarraWarra Biennial 2023 imparts to audiences the wish that humility towards living beings and storied places might generate more neighbourly exchanges and resolutely joyful futures.
Dr Eshrāghi says that, to date, most exhibitions framing the relationships between Australian society and its surrounding archipelagos in south/southeast Asia and the south/southwest Great Ocean have focused on continuing to sample and dabble in intercultural understanding, always remaining a ‘101’ of said region or culture.
“In Gregorian years 2022 and 2023, or by any calendar measure, it is time for complex conversations to take place, so that the sublime aesthetic and intellectual practices born of these contexts can be deeply felt and understood.
“The Biennial artists demonstrate critical care for communities, knowledges, and futures that are being made possible today, by sensitively delving into important concerns. These include animal–human kin constellations, enduring matriarchy, cultural renaissance, intergenerational trauma, territory-based healing, unspoken loss, affirmation of intersectional existence, redress of racial hierarchy, responsibility to territory through ecopoetics, and shining a light on contributions to art histories of the Majority World.”
Taking place on Wurundjeri Country, the TarraWarra Biennial 2023 will take audiences across and beyond the archipelagos and regions from West Asia and lutruwita to Borneo and Viti Levu.
Director of TarraWarra Museum of Art, Dr Victoria Lynn, says the forthcoming TarraWarra Biennial 2023 will be a significant exhibition highlighting important issues in recent art practice in the region.
“It explores the deeply intuitive engagement that each of the artists/artist groups has with a broad constellation of inspirational touchpoints: including being part of an archipelago of regions and the long cultural histories that resonate across the Great Ocean,” Dr Lynn said.
The artists participating in TarraWarra Biennial 2023 are: Regina Pilawuk Wilson (Ngan'gikurunggurr, Marrithyel); Vicki West (Trawlwoolway); Sonja Carmichael (Quandamooka) and Elisa Jane Carmichael (Quandamooka); The Unbound Collective: Ali Gumillya Baker (Mirning), Faye Rosas Blanch (Mbararam, Yidinyji), Natalie Harkin (Narungga), Simone Ulalka Tur (Yankunytjatjara); Jenna Lee (Gulumerridjin, Wardaman, KarraJarri); Abdul-Rahman Abdullah; Hoda Afshar; Elyas Alavi; Torika Bolatagici (iTaukei Viti); Dr Kirsten Lyttle (Tainui Waikato); Phuong Ngo; Bhenji Ra; David Sequeira; Sancintya Mohini Simpson; and Dr Leyla Stevens.
Image:TarraWarra Biennial 2023 Abdul Rahman Abdullah Pretty Beach 2019
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