Jenna Lee
Jenna Lee — 'To Carry: Light Inside IV' Pendant Lamp, 2024
Taking the form of a danala (dillybag) these vessels have been created to 'carry' the embodiment of the Larrakia word: balarr.
Balarr verb become light (to --
Balarr verb dawn (to --
Balarr verb light up (to –
Parallel to how my ancestors once gathered sustenance from the land using pandanus danala, these works propose that our traditional words can be collected, held, and consumed. By filling the danala with light, these dilly bags carry balarr.
Collecting and consuming (learning and knowing) ancestral language is the same embodied sensation as the warmth of sustenance we draw from food.
While traditionally woven from hand-dyed plant fibres grown in Larrakia country, these danala are made of paper and ink. These elements have historical significance as colonial instruments employed to document ancestral languages.
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Jenna Lee is a Gulumerridjin (Larrakia), Wardaman and KarraJarri Saltwater woman with mixed Japanese, Chinese, Filipino and Anglo-Australian ancestry. Using art to explore and celebrate her overlapping identities, Lee works across sculpture, installation, body adornment, moving images, photography and projection.
With a practice focused on materiality and ancestral material culture, Lee works with notions of the archive, histories of colonial collecting, and settler-colonial books and texts. Lee ritualistically analyses, deconstructs and reconstructs source material, language and books, transforming them into new forms of cultural beauty and pride and presenting tangibly translated books and expressions of language.
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August 10 - September 21 2024
Luminosity presents the work of four artists engaging with light through material practice.
Material: assorted Japanese paper, nori paste, gofun pigment, powder-coated steel, light cord, LED bulb
Dimensions: approx. 15 x 15 x 45cm
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