Courtesy: the artist and La Trobe Art Institute, Djaara Country/Bendigo.

Working from her lived experience as a diaspora Southern African Kaapse woman with African and Asian lineages, artist Roberta Joy Rich has engaged with Southern African cultural materials and their administration within the University’s collection to develop this new commission. Lying Inside considers the repatriation of cultural materials that lie oceans away from their motherland and the responsibility of the institution in accessing, archiving and administering these objects. Rich uses the term ‘anarchiving’ to describe her process, referring to an anarchistic approach to archives, challenging their expected logic whilst proposing empowering sites of collective self-determination.

As a public gallery situated on Djaara, La Trobe Art Institute represents Western institutions’ occupation of Indigenous lands while holding captive materials from diverse and distant cultures. To centre Black voices within this colonial violence, Rich has engaged with people from the Southern African diaspora to unpack what a process of repatriation could look like, and the role of the institution in this. Extending from the façade, visitors can listen to the artist sharing in conversation with Zulu diaspora. This dialogue brings Black voices to the fore of the institution’s engagement with cultural belongings, sharing in speculation, determining possibilities and imaginings of freedom; initiating a space for access and self-determination, propelling their histories beyond the institution’s basement.

Follow this artist