to gather, to nourish, to sustain

Wall text by Biennial Curator Léuli Eshrāghi 

Jenna Lee’s large installation 'to gather, to nourish, to sustain', is the culmination of years of research-creation of objects that embody Gulumerridjin language out of the absences and presences in colonial archives. In this installation, Jenna has crafted three dilly bags and 48 works on diamond-shaped Awagami custom haruki-shi paper which bear verbs interpreted as painted images. The latest expansion of her extensive work making Ancestral Belongings from museum collections and colonial dictionaries, these works are all paintings with pigments, all translations beyond a colonial reference, demonstrating what Jenna calls ‘the absolute connectedness between our objects and our ecology.’ The installation’s title refers to the verb preference of Western linguists when asking Ancestors about the dilly bag as a form. The extensive kin constellation of Gulumerridjin terms rendered in these diamonds is testament to the power of restitution aesthetics; more than symbols representing verbs and nouns, these images are replete with vibrant Indigenous language and life.