Gunditjmara / Djabwurrung artist Hayley Millar Baker will join Mandandanji / Mithaka arts consultant, creative producer and strategist Cara Kirkwood on the opening weekend of Millar Baker's major new commission, No Spectacular Soul, for a conversation event.
Together, they will explore the ideas, histories and processes underpinning the commission, unpacking the politics of the 'spectacular' and asking whose lives command attention, whose experiences are recognised, and whose humanity is afforded dignity and protection.
Moving between No Spectacular Soul and Millar Baker's broader lens-based practice, the conversation will consider the politics of representation, the colonial structures shaping how First Nations people are seen and understood, and how image-making can resist, unsettle and reclaim these narratives.
No Spectacular Soul is a major solo commission in Artspace's Main Galleries, the multi-screen video installation examines the conditions through which dignity, protection and recognition are granted or withheld, asking why a person must appear innocent, sympathetic or morally legible before their suffering is recognised as deserving of protection.
Baker said the work "critiques how systems of power grant or withhold dignity by demanding that the oppressed remain peaceful, grateful, or exemplary in their suffering".
"It asks, in the long run, who is allowed to be mourned, defended, or remembered, and on whose terms," she said.
Hayley Millar Baker. (Image: supplied)
Hayley Millar Baker joins Cara Kirkwood for in coversation event will take place on Saturday the 24th of October from 12pm to 1:30pm.
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