Zindzi Okenyo was in her early 20s when she first heard about Saartjie Baartman. She came across the name in a play: Venus by Suzan-Lori Parks — and was immediately obsessed. Baartman was a Khoisan woman from South Africa. In 1810, when she was still in her early 20s, she was taken to the UK by … Continue reading
ABC Arts / By Smriti Daniel for The Art Show For days, Vivienne Binns resisted the idea of adding teeth to her painting of a vagina. “The image kept coming to my mind and I kept rejecting it … Finally, I got tired of trying to avoid them and I just put them in.” Something clicked. The painting, which Binns … Continue reading
ABC Arts / By Smriti Daniel for The Stage Show New Year’s Eve. It is nearly time for the curtain to rise after the intermission during Moulin Rouge! The Musical. The audience are all in their seats when Carmen Pavlovic’s phone rings. A performer who was just about to go on, in a role that required very physical and intimate … Continue reading
ABC Radio National / By Smriti Daniel for Blueprint for Living Paul Bangay knows climate change is real. Over 35 years as a celebrated gardener and landscape designer, Bangay has seen the shift happen before his very eyes. When he began working in the 1980s, climate change still wasn’t something that was widely discussed. “Climate change has really come to … Continue reading
When the tip shops closed during COVID-19, Karla Dickens turned to eBay. For decades, the artist of Wiradjuri heritage has incorporated discarded or recycled objects into her mixed-media installations and sculptural collages. She re-contextualises the objects by adding layers of drawing, painting or embroidery as a form of commentary and reframes the narrative for contemporary … Continue reading
Sunrise across the Australian desert. Headlights blazing, a silver Mack truck accelerates towards its destination, kicking up a trail of dust in its wake. In the driver’s seat is Jalingbirri, a “blood hunter” – the only one of his kind left standing. For years, Jalingbirri has defended his people against the monsters the first fleet … Continue reading
Sometime in the ‘80s, my husband watched in fascination as a beautiful woman in a yellow saree cut down a whole murunga (or moringa) tree. The Tamil film was K. Bhagyaraj’s Mundhanai Mudichu, the title a reference to the knot at the edge of a woman’s saree pallu where she might tie a few coins for … Continue reading
When NASA’s Kepler telescope looked into space, it was also looking back in time. Locked into a heliocentric orbit, Kepler was set to gradually trail the Earth so that our magnetosphere wouldn’t affect its mission. The result was that Kepler had a unique view of our universe. Which is how we know that a billion … Continue reading
Lavinia Lovie Richards knows what it is to wake a sleeping language. The last native speaker of Barngarla, elder Moonie Davis, died back in the 1960s. He took with him a beautiful and complex language and was reportedly the last of his Aboriginal tribe to know songs that called the sharks and dolphins to chase … Continue reading
‘Oi terrorist, stop trying to make our school sharia!’ The play Jumu’ah (Friday Prayers) begins as it intends to go on – it doesn’t flinch from the reality of Muslim families living in Australia today. But it tells the story like you may not have heard it before, from the perspective of three young people – Layla, … Continue reading
Smriti Daniel 