In this episode, Brook Andrew, Artistic Director of the 22nd Biennale of Sydney #NIRIN2020 has a conversation with Lhola Amira about their installations at Cockatoo Island as well as The Art Gallery of New South Wales as part of the Biennale.

Lhola Amira’s (@lhola.amira) works address the wounds left by colonization across many disparate contexts, to create spaces for healing through connection to the earth, the ancestral, and the spiritual. Here, Amira creates portals for memory and rejuvenation, where one can step through a beaded curtain onto a ceremonial healing bed of salt, to hear the sounds of singing, to listen and remember.

The artist invites the audience to remove your shoes and stand with your bare feet on the salt, to listen to the music, specifically created to heal and transform the body into a space of wellbeing, ancestral connection, and self-care.

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Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney with generous assistance from the Sherman Foundation, and assistance from #NIRIN500 patrons

Courtesy the artist and SMAC Gallery

Extended thanks, gratitude, and acknowledgment to the following people who played an integral part throughout the journey of this constellation: Thembsie Mbongwa, Lolita Lungile Mbongwa, Noncedo Gxekwa, Barbara Thandeki, Pieta Magengenene, SMAC Gallery