Dr Paola Balla
Dr Paola Balla is a Wemba-Wemba & Gunditjmara artist, curator, writer & academic who focuses on Aboriginal women’s resistance, art & stories. Her work is published in Freize (UK), Oceania, Etchings Indigenous, Writers Victoria, SBS, NITV, Metro Magazine & Cordite Poetry. In 2018, she co-edited Blak Brow, Blak women’s edition, The Lifted Brow & in 2021 co-edited Artlink Indigenous; Visualising Sovereignty with Dr Ali Gumillya Baker. Paola co-curated Sovereignty (2016) & Unfinished Business, perspectives on art and feminism, (2017) ACCA. Most recently her art was shown in Wilam Biik, (2021), Tarra Warra Museum of Art, Treaty, (2021) Wyndham Arts & Cultural Centre, Sovereign Sisters; Domestic Work, FUMA (2022) . She is a researcher & teaches Indigenous Education & Indigenous Art units at Moondani Balluk, Indigenous Academic Centre, Victoria University. Balla’s art addresses the impacts of racism and trauma on Aboriginal women and celebrates Blak beauty, story and resistance in photography and installation.
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This practice led research sets out to document and respond to the work of Aboriginal women in art and community. I have used practice-led inquiry informed using various standpoints; as artist, writer, curator, community researcher and as a Wemba-Wemba & Gunditjmara, matriarchal and sovereign woman. I have practiced community ways of 'being, knowing and doing' as termed by Professor Karen Martin, to witness, participate, and respond to Aboriginal women's art making and activism in a series of essays and a new body of visual works.
The exhibition occupied two separate spaces but related responses. Roslyn Smorgan Gallery held an epistemological space (the knowing), an active studio of a new body of photographic based works drawn from my matriarchal family stories; both past, present and future, that honour matriarchal knowledge and ways of being and respond to a broad body of Aboriginal women’s work. This knowing includes family reclamation of Wemba-Wemba language and associated archival materials. The Performance Space holds an ontological place (the being) of memory and timelessness, respite, healing and repair with familial story, survival, language and knowledge that speaks to loss & the need for spaces of unconditional love.
APPENDIX A LIST OF WORKS Unconditional Love Space Performance Space Gallery FCAC.
The exhibition occupied two separate spaces but related responses. Roslyn Smorgan Gallery held an epistemological space (the knowing), an active studio of a new body of photographic based works drawn from my matriarchal family stories; both past, present and future, that honour matriarchal knowledge and ways of being and respond to a broad body of Aboriginal women’s work. This knowing includes family reclamation of Wemba-Wemba language and associated archival materials. The Performance Space held an ontological place (the being) of memory and timelessness, respite, healing and repair with familial story, survival, language and knowledge that speaks to loss & the need for spaces of unconditional love.
The installation, titled ‘place of unconditional love,’ was created site specifically for the Performance Space at FCAC and was created through 'daily acts of repair' over six months in collaboration with and sharing with other Aboriginal women and family members in a new process of eco dyeing fabrics, clothing & rags to become 'healing cloths.' This is not to claim that these cloths hold powers beyond them, but that they are comforting and hold the potential for healing and naming a healing process. Healing is often an elusive and difficult process and lacks a visual guide. This body of work is an attempt to grapple with and resolve this process. Eco dyeing is also known as bush dyeing, and though I come from the bush, I did this work in the city where I live, in urban spaces so refer to this process as ‘eco dyeing.’ Some of the plants and eucalyptus was collected on up the bush in my hometowns of Echuca and Kyabram on Yorta Yorta Country, and on Boon Wurrung Country & Wurundjeri Country along the Maribyrnong River. Each place I gathered, I said thank you to the plants and trees I gathered from and to the Ancestors of that Country. I was careful to only take small amounts from each tree or plant and to spread the collecting out so as not to deplete each place.
These practices are based on my relationships with others, my matriarchy, family and chosen blak family in urban space and through networks across Mobs through digital pathways of social media, messaging, sharing, communicating and finding solid Tiddas-or Yaryins as we say in Wemba-Wemba-Brother Boys, Sister Girls, our gender fluid Siblings, our Queer and Trans relatives and Family. Through ‘relationality’ as termed by Prof Aileen Moreton-Robinson, based critical analysis, I hope my work is generating insight about how Aboriginal women are at the intersection of colonial injuries that include their gender, race, class and social positioning. By subverting various forms of art and resistance in diverse contexts of community and ‘cross spaces,’ like academia and public life and social media, Aboriginal women create and recreate strategies to respond and express ‘survivance.’ The exegesis shows that creating multiple strands of art and cultural practice emerges from thousands of years of connected practice as sovereign people; and speak back and blak to an ongoing coloniality with attempts at healing and daily acts of resistance and repair.
https://www.artlink.com.au/articles/4675/walking-in-deadly-blak-womens-footprints/
https://vuir.vu.edu.au/id/eprint/37710
https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/essay/tyirrem-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-knew-it/
This practice led research sets out to document and respond to the work of Aboriginal women in art and community. I have used practice-led inquiry informed using various standpoints; as artist, writer, curator, community researcher and as a Wemba-Wemba & Gunditjmara, matriarchal and sovereign woman. I have practiced community ways of 'being, knowing and doing' as termed by Professor Karen Martin, to witness, participate, and respond to Aboriginal women's art making and activism in a series of essays and a new body of visual works.
The exhibition occupied two separate spaces but related responses. Roslyn Smorgan Gallery held an epistemological space (the knowing), an active studio of a new body of photographic based works drawn from my matriarchal family stories; both past, present and future, that honour matriarchal knowledge and ways of being and respond to a broad body of Aboriginal women’s work. This knowing includes family reclamation of Wemba-Wemba language and associated archival materials. The Performance Space holds an ontological place (the being) of memory and timelessness, respite, healing and repair with familial story, survival, language and knowledge that speaks to loss & the need for spaces of unconditional love.
APPENDIX A LIST OF WORKS Unconditional Love Space Performance Space Gallery FCAC.
The exhibition occupied two separate spaces but related responses. Roslyn Smorgan Gallery held an epistemological space (the knowing), an active studio of a new body of photographic based works drawn from my matriarchal family stories; both past, present and future, that honour matriarchal knowledge and ways of being and respond to a broad body of Aboriginal women’s work. This knowing includes family reclamation of Wemba-Wemba language and associated archival materials. The Performance Space held an ontological place (the being) of memory and timelessness, respite, healing and repair with familial story, survival, language and knowledge that speaks to loss & the need for spaces of unconditional love.
The installation, titled ‘place of unconditional love,’ was created site specifically for the Performance Space at FCAC and was created through 'daily acts of repair' over six months in collaboration with and sharing with other Aboriginal women and family members in a new process of eco dyeing fabrics, clothing & rags to become 'healing cloths.' This is not to claim that these cloths hold powers beyond them, but that they are comforting and hold the potential for healing and naming a healing process. Healing is often an elusive and difficult process and lacks a visual guide. This body of work is an attempt to grapple with and resolve this process. Eco dyeing is also known as bush dyeing, and though I come from the bush, I did this work in the city where I live, in urban spaces so refer to this process as ‘eco dyeing.’ Some of the plants and eucalyptus was collected on up the bush in my hometowns of Echuca and Kyabram on Yorta Yorta Country, and on Boon Wurrung Country & Wurundjeri Country along the Maribyrnong River. Each place I gathered, I said thank you to the plants and trees I gathered from and to the Ancestors of that Country. I was careful to only take small amounts from each tree or plant and to spread the collecting out so as not to deplete each place.
These practices are based on my relationships with others, my matriarchy, family and chosen blak family in urban space and through networks across Mobs through digital pathways of social media, messaging, sharing, communicating and finding solid Tiddas-or Yaryins as we say in Wemba-Wemba-Brother Boys, Sister Girls, our gender fluid Siblings, our Queer and Trans relatives and Family. Through ‘relationality’ as termed by Prof Aileen Moreton-Robinson, based critical analysis, I hope my work is generating insight about how Aboriginal women are at the intersection of colonial injuries that include their gender, race, class and social positioning. By subverting various forms of art and resistance in diverse contexts of community and ‘cross spaces,’ like academia and public life and social media, Aboriginal women create and recreate strategies to respond and express ‘survivance.’ The exegesis shows that creating multiple strands of art and cultural practice emerges from thousands of years of connected practice as sovereign people; and speak back and blak to an ongoing coloniality with attempts at healing and daily acts of resistance and repair.
https://www.artlink.com.au/articles/4675/walking-in-deadly-blak-womens-footprints/
https://vuir.vu.edu.au/id/eprint/37710
https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/essay/tyirrem-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-knew-it/
Co-written by Kelly Koumalatsos and Dr Paola Balla and featuring the voices of a broad range of artists, writers and cultural figures, Madjem Bambandila takes a unique community-based approach to storytelling.
The book takes the form of a possum cloak, stitching together conversations, essays, poems and personal reflections to create a volume that is warm and grounded in culture.
For this reason, many First Nations people hold different views on Cook’s legacy, including Cooks’ Cottage in the Fitzroy Gardens, which was home to Captain Cook’s parents and relocated from England to the gardens in 1934.
In 2020, a number of institutions invited First Nations perspectives on Cook to mark the 250th anniversary of his first Pacific voyage. This included the Australian Museum’s 2020 Project – an exhibition project centred on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s perspectives.
Aligned with Future Melbourne Goal 9: a city with an Aboriginal focus, and in the spirit of truth-telling, City of Melbourne commissioned Dr Paola Balla, Dr Clare Land and Kate Golding to develop a publication that considers First Nations perspectives on Cook’s legacy and Cooks’ Cottage.
Entitled BLAK COOK BOOK, the publication invites visitors to the Fitzroy Gardens and the wider public to reflect on Australia’s history in all its complexity and be open to multiple perspectives.
Sovereignty:
Max Delany
'ACCA is proud to present Sovereignty, a major
exhibition focussing upon contemporary art of
First Nations peoples of South East Australia,
alongside keynote historical works, to explore
culturally and linguistically diverse narratives of selfdetermination, identity, sovereignty and resistance.
Taking the example of Ngurungaeta (Elder) and
Wurundjeri leader William Barak (c.1824–1903) as
a model – in particular Barak’s role as an artist,
activist, leader, diplomat and translator – the
exhibition presents the vibrant and diverse visual art
and culture of the continuous and distinct nations,
language groups and communities of Victoria’s
sovereign, Indigenous peoples.
Sovereignty brings together new commissions,
recent and historical works by over thirty artists,
celebrating the continuing vitality, resilience and
ingenuity of Indigenous communities and their
cultural practices. Developed in collaboration with
Paola Balla, a Wemba-Wemba and Gunditjmara
artist, writer and curator, Sovereignty is based on
a consultative, collaborative curatorial model, and
draws upon the knowledge and expertise of an
advisory group encompassing elders, artists and
community representatives, to assist our aims
for the curatorial process to be informed by First
Nations communities, knowledge and cultural
protocols. In this sense, Sovereignty is conceived as
a platform for Indigenous community expression,
and is accompanied by an extensive program of
talks, forums, screenings, performances, workshops,
education programs and events.
Sovereignty is structured around a set of practices
and relationships in which art and society,
community and family, history and politics
are inextricably connected. A diverse range of
discursive and thematic contexts are elaborated:
the celebration and assertion of cultural identity and
resistance; the significance and inter-connectedness
of Country, people and place; the renewal and reinscription of cultural languages and practices; the
importance of matriarchal culture and wisdom; the
dynamic relations between activism and aesthetics;
and a playfulness with language and signs in
contemporary society.
Balla, Paola (2016) Sovereignty: Inalienable and intimate. In: Sovereignty : 17 December 2016-26 March 2017. Balla, Paola and Delany, Max, eds. Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, pp. 13-17
Curators:Paola Balla & Max Delany. ISBN-13 9780994347244
https://content.acca.melbourne/uploads/2017/03/Sovereignty-Catalogue.pdf
https://acca.melbourne/exhibition/sovereignty/