Encoded with song
Encoded with song
Sun in our bellies shining
Cradling a leaf
Seeing the hollow below
Not empty but holding us
I have been told it is not just the stars we should observe, the spaces between stars are just as important. They mirror the lands and waters around us. The spaces between are not empty darkness but so full. Full of energy, full of matter, and most essentially full of connections. These spaces hold and grow relationships.
This idea filled my core like a skeleton while I was in Medellín, Colombia, at The Space Between exhibition. Developed in collaboration with the Powerhouse, the Medellín Museum of Modern Art, and Australian artist and Powerhouse Adjunct Curator Brook Garru Andrew, the exhibition embodied connections and relationships.
The themes of kinship, of our shared responsibilities to our lands, waterways and skies, how objects that many might deem inanimate can actually be imbued with energy and spirit, something us in museums need to be aware of, how we have survived as Indigenous peoples against the violence of colonialism and how we have and can imagine new futures guided by our knowledges came through strong in the works and programming. These discussions made me feel connected and grounded even though I was over 10,000 km from home.
To commence the exhibition and the critical discourse program I was part of, the Willka Yaku Ancestral Council led a generous ceremony, sharing tobacco leaves in an act of reciprocity and grounding. This moment was an embodied lesson in local Indigenous epistemology and law, a reminder that knowledge is carried through practice, not just discourse. Following the ceremony, there were performances by Brian Fuata and Bhenji Ra disrupted and reimagined the museum and gallery space, transforming it from a site of observation into one of embodied participation. These moments underscored the very essence of The Space Between—not just an exhibition, but an evolving dialogue of presence and absence, of movement and stillness, of past and future converging.
