FEAST OR FAMINE

It was the last day of two exhibitions at the Regional Contemporary Art Fund –  Fonds régional d’art contemporain  (FRAC) in Reims, France, on Sunday 12 January 2025. Both were launched on 11 October 2024. One was the exhibition “Takiwa Hou: Imagining New Spaces” in collaboration with Video Club New Zealand. The other was Milan-born Viola Leddi’s exhibition “Pupille.”     Viola Leddi explores the representation of the female body in Italian art, culture, and society, as well as in Western culture in general. She uses self-representation, diaries, and drawings of adolescent girls from the archives of her friends. The title “Pupille” refers to “doll” or “little girl” in reference to how others may perceive a female.    “Takiwa Hou: Imagining New Spaces” is a collection of videos by three indigenous Maori artists from New Zealand: Russ Flatt, Kahurangiariki Smith, and Suzanne Tamaki – exploring their own futures. They use a variety of techniques, such as ...

At the Quai Branly  Museum in Paris is  Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters  exhibition from 4 April to 2 July 2023. It traces the desert trails of the Seven Sisters in Australia, one of the most legendary stories in the country.    Ancestral information is passed on from elders, told in paintings, ceremonies, and songs. The exhibition traces the corridors of knowledge, in which the desert paths contain rules of social living, as well as astronomical and geographical knowledge for survival. In the exhibition are more than 200 pieces, created by more than 100 artists, including audiovisual installations, filmed ceremonial performances, and narrated stories.   MARTINA NICOLLS MartinaNicollsWebsite    I     Rainy Day Healing    I    Martinasblogs    I     Publications     I     Facebook    I    Paris Website    I    Paris blogs   ...

  Rainstick TM  is an Australian indigenous electrobiology company harnessing the power of lightning to transform the food, agriculture, materials, medical, and research industries. Rainstick TM  biotech startup combines traditional indigenous knowledge systems and modern electrokinetics for the future of food and an alternative to pesticides, fungicides, and genetic modification.    Like thunderstorms, electrical influences on growing systems are an untapped and overlooked resource, says the founder of Rainstick TM , Darryl Lyons, a Maiawali man.    By controlling which electrical signals are given to plants and fungi, Rainstick TM  can encourage certain behaviours around growth, nutrient use, nutrient density, and speed of growth. Darryl Lyons hypothesizes that someday even inter-generational epigenetic expressions can accelerate the process of selective breeding.   Rainstick TM  sees opportunity for this innovative technology for food...

  Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants (2013) is a ‘braid of stories’ from Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. It is an intertwining of science, spirit, and storytelling.   The book begins with sweetgrass, believed to be the first plant to grow on Earth – a sacred plant. The author tells us about other important plants too: pecan, strawberry, maple, witch hazel, freshwater green algae (‘the water net’), water lily, corn, and so on.   Robin Wall Kimmerer is a plant scientist, and she adds, ‘but I am also a poet and the world speaks to me in metaphor.’    She talks in powerful poetic prose of the ‘communal generosity’ of plants, a ‘mycorrhizal network’ that unites people to land and ancestral responsibility, and the gifts of plants that go beyond food and shelter to songs of wisdom. She tells of the ‘grammar of animacy’ and indigenous words that encapsulate all meaning: su...

  From 3 July to 6 November 2022, the Cartier Foundation in Paris is exhibiting 31 paintings of  Kaiadilt  artist  Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda – Sally Gabori. First Nations artist Sally Gabori (1924-2015) was born on Bentinck Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria in Australia. Her name incorporates the place of her birth – Mirdidingki – a small creek in the south of the island – and her totem animal Juwarnda, which is a dolphin. She lived on Mornington Island from 1948 after a cyclone flooded her land. She returned to Bentinck Island in the 1990s after Australia passed legislation which recognized the rights of the Kaiadilt to their land after years of fighting for land rights.   She began painting in 2005 at the age of eighty. Most of her paintings are topographical references to her land.   Her strong, unique sense of colour catapulted her to worldwide acclaim in contemporary art. Her wide flourishing brushstrokes, intense colour, and palette combination make ...

    'Piinpi:  Contemporary Australian Indigenous Fashion in Paris'  is part of the  Australia now France 2021-2022  campaign, displayed at the Australian Embassy in France (from 31 January – 19 April 2022) and at the Observatory in the BHV-Marais exhibition space as part of the Australian takeover of the store (from 29 January – 27 February 2022). Created by the Bendigo Art Gallery in Australia, the exhibition 'Piinpi: Contemporary Australian Indigenous Fashion in Paris' shines a light on Australia’s First Nations' creatives. Piinpi highlights the power and diversity of the rapidly growing fashion and textile industry in Australia. Piinpi  is an expression that the  Kanichi Thampanyu  (First Nations people from the East Cape York Peninsula in Australia) use to describe changes in the landscape across time and space. For First Nations people across Australia, knowledge of the land and seasons is culturally important.  While...