Can Decolonising Art Rituals in Art galleries re-wire how we experience our own bodies and celebrate solidarity with Nature while co-creating amazing Art? Can barriers become invitations? The CUSP exhibition is an example of the power of community Placed-based experiments in the pursuit of Awe and Joy. This experiment is an iteration of an ongoing research project and explored a challenge posed by Canadian science broadcaster and environmental activist David Suzuki (exhibition statement below.) Suzuki challenges us 'to look at the world from a different perspective.' During this project we discovered physical and creative ways to experience broader perceptions through harmonising with Nature.
At the CUSP we asked these questions:
'How do we communicate with Nature?'
'Can Plants and Humans 'feel' like 'biological kin'?
I didn't realise these simple questions could lead to changing my worldview. I couldn't see at the start of this project that these questions challenged the foundations of colonial binary laws. I
was completely unprepared for the systematic discrimination that would occur during this exhibition. I am so grateful to have embarked on this journey with my Queer+Ally community because
together, we co-created a series of Decolonising Art Rituals, astonishing Artworks and harmonic Awe.
The CUSP project began with a 12 month residency and mentorships funded by the Regional Arts Fund, which led to experimentation with polyphonic symbiosis and resonance communication to promote connection between Plants and Humans. According to colonial norms Plants and Humans are binaries and when binaries co-exist 'Abjection' occurs. Therefore would this visual art experiment create an Abject Place because of co-existing binaries? What affect would this Abject Place create for audiences? What actually happened during this exhibition experiment was simultaneously baffling, painful and evolutionary...
It all began innocently with a harmless polyphonic voice workshop, funded by Working it Out (LGBTIQA+ community grant), subsidised by MAC and aimed at the Queer+Ally community. Before the exhibition, local Queer magazine 'Red Thread' published my article entitled 'CUSP: Queering ecologies through polyphonic symbiosis' to promote the workshop which subsequently sold out. The amazing Bec Tilley led the workshop and we had a wonderful time experimenting with our voices as improvised sounds from Nature.
We then recorded an improvised polyphony inside the gallery space in response to the CUSP artwork which showcased visuals and sounds from the Myrtle Forest. This recording of our authentic Queer voices harmonising with the Myrtle Forest was immediately embedded in the CUSP artwork. A wonderful newspaper review described, our voices as 'sweetly eerie', that 'hover at the edge of singing, chanting and incantation', and the CUSP exhibition as 'a strange beautiful text you cannot read but that seems familiar.' (Mercury, Harper, 2025)
It was a surprise to everyone when the recording of our Queer+Ally voices was inexplicably and systematically silenced - despite constant requests for the soundscape to be heard during the exhibition.
The CUSP project was designed around the concept of providing a direct pathway for marginalised communities to express themselves creatively in a public Art space through exploring their Voices outside of colonial binary frameworks. This exhibition received local, state and federal government funding. I have spent years collaborating with my Queer+Ally community and co-created processes to support people to be vulnerable, to be courageous, to be authentic and to explore our Voices in 'safe' public spaces. This systematic silencing of our Voices by this publicly funded art organisation deepened existing wounds, created more barriers and inflicted a great deal of pain on an already oppressed community.
Consequently, people who collaborated in the workshop and other allies got angry, got active and protested to create astounding Artworks through a Decolonising Art Ritual. We organised a photoshoot documenting us, as we crossed the streams and stepped into the magic of the Plant and Human polyphonic vibration harmonies created in the gallery by the CUSP artwork through combining the vibrations of light, sound and motion - the threads of flow.
During the CUSP opening night speech I described this visual art installation as a Nature/Human 'birth canal' and through this photoshoot I was about to discover what this might look like...
'CUSP is part of a series of experiments for the 'Tune:in journey’, a Queer creative research project. The goal of this research is to explore self-awareness as a strategy for self-determination through Queer abject joy.' (WIO grant application)
I got to the gallery early so I could be alone to experiment. I put the camera on a tripod, set a slow shutter speed, activated the multiple shot timer, and danced in the visual voice beam of the CUSP while the camera clicked. Sometimes I sang along with the Voices. When my collaborators arrived I showed them my timer photos and we had fun playing, creating and evolving in the flow together = Queer Joy! dance and laughter as re-birth.
All of the photos from this protest are 'in-camera' outcomes. I don't use AI and my version of Photoshop is pre-cloud (2012.) The only adjustments I have made to the images are cropping and exposure - because we were shooting in the dark.
WARNING: The images from this photoshoot captured monstrous abject threshold-crossings, moments where binaries co-exist in an exquisite, ecstatic harmony of evolution revolution through non-binary Queer resonance at the CUSP.
When I look at these protest photos I feel - WOW!
What amazing beauty!
Why are these images so challenging to look at?
Is this Abject magic?
Let's make some more magic!
I am filled with gratitude when I remember the amazing journeys we shared. Each photo is a portal, a thread that weaves a story in a Queer conscious ecology. I see the howling grief and agony of great loss being swept away. I see the open beating heart and throat of a friend searching for their Voice. I see the grit, the playfulness, and a willingness to explore. To simultaneously have fun experimenting, while co-creating spontaneous moments of harmonic Awe.
I see a community which is deeply connected to the truth of 'Nature' within ourselves,
connected to the people we sing with, and
connected to beautiful wild, diverse Natural places - Ecologies which have a right to exist and to be heard.
I see Queer Abject Joy.
I see power.
We stand with Nature.
When I look at the CUSP exhibition photos, I see a darkened corridor with comfortable stylish furniture and a bright portal at the end. When I look closer at the portal, I see an intriguing opening to a multi-perspective, diverse, intersectional, interconnected, Escher-like, Natural world. This portal is a dome-like protrusion into our 'reality', leading us into a soft, multi-layered, fluffy, green mossy tunnel, and a warm, gentle watery pool. I think of consciousness, a deconstructed, beguiling notion of mind as a fluid. A tangible sensation of resonance, reinforced by the ripples emanating like invitations from this liquid, washing over us, through our eyes and our ears, with the harmony and kinship of sovereign Forest and Human Voices vibrating inside our bodies. Is this how we relate to other species as biological kin?
CUSP is a portrait of an actual Place. It is a multi-sensory journey of the ancient Myrtle Forest. The photos in this digital sequence of protest, capture a moment we - Plant and Human (so-called 'binaries') - glimpsed symbiotic co-habitation, collaboration and solidarity.
Who defines these 'so-called' binaries?
Why do 'they' seek to separate Humans from Nature?
Why do 'they' seek to destroy Nature?
Why do 'they' deny our symbiotic connection?
Why do 'they' seek self-destruction?
Colonial binary laws seek to colonise our worlds, our minds, our hearts, our bodies, and our Voices - to separate us from Nature, to make us feel 'other' or 'Abject' inside our own bodies - to silence us, to reduce us to a 'resource', to erase us.
At the CUSP, in this more-than-human 'Abject Place', colonial binary boundaries dissolved which allowed our bodies to overlap, to merge for an instant - but not as something 'assimilated' or 'solid.' Perhaps this process of resonance is more like a combination of a smell and a sound, like clouds overlapping? Perhaps what is created by this 'monstrous' co-habitation is an opportunity for unique individuals to contribute their beliefs to a polyphonic Zeitgeist, as it exists "in the air" from moment to moment?
CUSP is part of a series of Art experiments for a Queer Intersectional creative research project. This 'Abject Place' was activated through a series of Decolonising Art Rituals which created opportunities for conversations, for connection, for singing, for dancing, for Awe, for joy, for norms to be examined, re-negotiated and re-wired within our own bodies - to embrace bio-diversity as a simultaneous political act of defiance and solidarity.
Through this artwork I ask questions about singing. According to colonial norms people are only allowed to 'sing' for an audience as 'performance'. Using our Voices outside the norms of 'singing'
and 'performance' is considered heretical. An important cornerstone of these norms, is that only 'chosen' people are allowed to 'sing' and their Voices must be trained to conform to standards
controlled by gatekeepers.
Adults systematically enforce these 'norms' by telling children every day they are not allowed to 'sing' or use their Voices. There is a framework and language which uses shame to silence
people. Tragically these children live with the belief they are not allowed to use or experience their own Voice for intrinsic, embodied enjoyment.
This is how deep colonial oppression is entrenched in our belief system and enforced through society. For example, I was born in Australia when there were laws which criminalised People of Colour
for singing or dancing. It was called the 'White Australia Policy,' and we lived in fear because as children, we could be taken from our homes and families and locked-up for saying something or
moving in a way that was 'illegal' according to the local Police.
Over the past 4 years I have spoken to hundreds of Queer adults of all Colours about singing, and 98% of them are still afraid and ashamed to enjoy their Voices and bodies because of these
childhood beliefs about 'chosen' Voices and extrinsic validation.
Through my practice I applied Queer theory to these colonial beliefs, to push boundaries using an embodied, non-binary approach. Over the past 4 years I have explored dance and learned how to use
my Voice as political acts of defiance. Through collaboration with my Queer+Ally community I overcame the fear and shame from my colonial childhood. This Queer approach helped me confront
internalised homophobia and re-wire my own body through these embodied Decolonising Art Rituals.
These images documenting Queer Abject Joy are just one of the amazing discoveries from this Decolonising Art Experiment. The photoshoot will be an important feature of the next experiment or iteration in this ongoing pursuit of Queer Abject Joy through continuing:
- to step outside of colonial binaries
- to discover more Decolonising Art Rituals
- to provide pathways for oppressed communities to sing, to dance, to play, to re-wire and to experience solidarity with Nature.
I am proud to stand with my fabulous community.
We stand with Nature.
[click to see/hear more documentation of the CUSP exhibition]
Thank you!
Thank you to the wonderful courageous people that joined me for this photo protest in response to the disturbing treatment we experienced during this exhibition. These images are only a sample of the amazing photographs we co-created. I wish you joy when you look at your photos and please feel free to share the Joy of your photos through your networks. Thank you Mandy, Alison, Bec, Jane, Brendan, Luke, Hamish, HK, Heather, Erna, James, Lili, Lynn, Davie, Sara - and Helen for the conversation that sparked this photoshoot.
Thank you to the open-hearted voices from the CUSP polyphonic soundscape workshop for making this soundscape so wonderful! Big shout out to our amazing Voice coach Bec and the magical voices - Alison (our midwife in this Human/Plant birth canal!), Christine, Dave, Emmanuelle, Felicity, Lila, Lili, Lux, Mandy, Merri, Mikki, Sandra, Scoutt (and Richard for being there).
I also want to thank my mentors - Belinda, Christine, Lila and Mihirangi - this amazing project happened because of you. I am very grateful to Arts Tasmania and Morwenna Collett for those amazing Access webinars which helped me understand how unconscious bias works. Thank you Ruth and the Conscious Girlfriend Academy, SAND and the Shift network for granting me scholarships so I can pursue this work charged with the inspiration and discoveries I experience as a result of the knowledge and wisdom you share with me.
The CUSP project mentorship was made possible by the Australian Governments Regional Arts Fund, which supports the arts in regional and remote Australia #RegionalArtsFund
#RegionalArtsAustralia #RANTArts
The CUSP polyphonic soundscape workshop was supported by the Tasmanian Government through Working it Out and received mixed support from MAC #workingitoutinc
