This text is an opportunity to admit that I did not think of the ‘family’ as a curatorial model until I had created my own. It’s a relatively absent topic in contemporary art and whilst feminist artists dissect the roles of women, caretakers, and mothers, the structure that surrounds these individuals is somewhat absent. This lack of representation was only noticeable when I, as a newly made mother, strived to find references in institutional spaces.
Whilst the representation of family life appears in photography and portraiture across generations of artistic practice it is the concept and ideology of a family or kinship system that is only now pronouncing itself, in more recent years, as a worthy and rigorous concept. Is it its universality and connectivity to reality that makes it appear mundane as a topic?
The notion of the family could be perceived as a problematic concept; its appearance has surfaced and resurfaced historically and curatorially in a somewhat neglected manner. Plainly put, the family is a source of exhaustion, conflict and trauma. Writer, Sophie Lewis, also argues that the nuclear family, in particular, is a conservative patriarchal structure tethered and bound with capitalism as a system. Furthermore, the classical nuclear family (man, woman,child(ren)) embodies a model that no longer aligns with our growing understanding of gender and gendered roles. Lastly, as we watch the climate crises continue, convincing arguments are brewing on the suitability of this burning earth for the next and future generations.
We are finding more ways to become relatable. There are more of us who live alone, unmarried, childless/free, and are living for much longer. We host multigenerational homes, blended families, and are embracing the fluidity of genders, domestic roles and how it functions in the home. Societies are reconfiguring and moving away from Western ideals of families with genetic links and reforming with the chosen few who can uplift and create a safe haven from the world. We seem to hold onto this static and archaic idea of the family yet these new forms of arrangements have been normalised without us noticing. Whilst politics and mainstream media hold onto this historical view point, powerful myths of family are shifting beneath us. More recently artists are portraying a range of familial relationships, from blood relatives to intergenerational kinship systems to queer communities. It is a theme that we can all comment and critique – it does affect everyone. Shared Skin enquires how we define these affiliations and presents a complex picture of what a family can be. Giving thought to familial relationships (with people and places) this exhibition positions the family in dialogue with other important conversations on ancestry, history, politics, class and identity. In particular, by centering the perspectives of First Nations and culturally diverse artists Shared Skin ensures that we acknowledge that kinship systems have preceded western art theory and that necessary conversation needs to be drawn from their absence within the contemporary art vernacular.
The selected works highlight the unconscious dynamics of familial and ancestral relationships through affection, collaboration, language and learning. They propose social responsibility and present people who destabilise conventional role attributions to pursue their own individual life-visions as a community. Essential and common to all of the works is an existential connection to a person, a place or an idea leaving a lasting influence which provides support, learning and orientation to a way of life.
Dhargarri Buggi Buggilu (Tomorrow, a long time ago) (2025) acknowledges and continues a millenia of story-telling between First Nations families along the Yorke Peninsula of South Australia, Kaurna Country and travelling beyond the boundaries of neighbouring countries and states. Steered by Jacob Boehme and in collaboration with KTB and the Narungga Family Choir Dhargarri Buggi Buggilu (Tomorrow, a long time ago) builds on the collective’s 2023 debut dance work Guuranda. Emboldening its younger collaborators Dhargarri Buggi Buggilu (Tomorrow, a long time ago) utilises contemporary music and imagery with the Choir’s relearning of their First language. Encouraging intergenerational learning of lost language between Elders and future leaders Dhargarri Buggi Buggilu (Tomorrow, a long time ago) exemplifies the strength and spirit of Ngarrendjeri, Kaurna and other First Nations culture and stories that have been lost along this coastline to industry, displacement and colonisation. Drone footage scans and profiles the coastline alongside revenue building industries that have deteriorated significantly due to economic impact and environment. Evoking the spirits of ancestors and singing proudly in language, this filmic work asserts that Country does not forget.
Juanella Donovan frequently collaborates and involves her children and matriarchs in her work. Continuum (2024-25) is a series of new works that weave both the physical and metaphorical sharing of knowledge between elders and kin. Using natural raffia, quandong seeds, human hair, emu feathers and more, Donovan honours the spirits of Ngarrandjeri Elders past, and instills knowledge in her children to ensure the continuation of this practice for future generations. The focus of light is a beacon to connect the physical with the spiritual and act as a reminder that First Nations culture and story-telling has been here since first light. Each chosen material honours a protocol and practice that has serviced First Nations people for generations.
Inspired by the cyclical nature of the moon, the ocean and the inhabitants beneath Jennifer Tee’s practices cross the boundaries of sculpture, installation, performance and craft. The work responds to experiences of cultural hybridity, identity and language, and trade routes between people, commodities and objects from nature. Inspired by First Nations story-telling of the moon and its connection to culture, Tee’s investigations entangle these ideas with her own diasporic experience of migration. Investigating her Chinese-Indonesian ancestry, Tee pays homage to her father who migrated with his parents and sister to the Netherlands from Indonesia on a ship in the 1950s. Her artworks probe ideas around belonging, transition, passage, colonialism, and humanity’s relationship to our environment and the cosmos.
In an act of shedding one skin to reveal another Tee’s performative works carefully and meticulously emulates this process of learning and relearning one’s body in space. Her performance works intentionally slow down time and space. By creating meditative movement between bodies and her artworks Tee brings these relational ideas into an otherwordly state.
Hana Pera Aoake’s practice crosses multiple platforms and IRL spaces. Text and language are prevalent outputs to communicate her ideas but it is in the permeation of her deep thinking towards ancestry both plant based and human that is most striking. Revisiting her manifesto ‘On the maintenance of art and community (on Imagining the Future in the present) aka care’ after the birth of her first child, Aoake returns to this notion of maintenance and connection to labour and extraction of our natural resources. Honing in on their local environment and invasive planting of non Indigenous trees within their community Aoake has watched as the aging, looming, pine trees have damaged its surroundings. Reinforcing their collaborative relationships with communities and elders, a recording of the manifesto is offered by a local activist and mentor to Aoake. History does, by nature, repeat itself but what Aoake reinforces here is that parenthood can reshape behaviour and values.
What Boehme, Donovan and Aoake offer to audiences in this first suite of exhibition works is a deep acknowledgement of familial bonds to Country and how this can manifest itself as a material outcome. Each artist recognises the adverse effects colonialism has had on their land but courageously and hospitably offer this act of resilience as an invitation to undo what has happened in our collective past.
Steven Rhall’s 2016 video work Us (still) (2014) looks at portraiture and self archiving through a domestic and documentary style lens. By editing this found footage of Rhall’s family and extended family’s houses he exposes a new protagonist within the work and their personal values placed within the home. Rhall’s practice examines the overlap between First Nation art and the Western art canon, challenging how they are represented and classified. Us (still) offers moments of insight into a family and upbringing that is relatable and common. By focusing solely on the contents of these dwellings Rhall exposes a deeply honest understanding of what caretakers pride themselves in, or, perhaps disguise when searching for validation.
Tama is a short film about a young Māori Deaf boy who wants to perform the haka, an important ceremonial dance in Māori culture. Misunderstood by his dismissive father and bullied by his brother, the main protagonist, Tama, struggles to find his place and feel seen. On a near-fatal car trip he has to confront his family, and begins to grow from an undervalued youth into a proud young man. The confrontation between father and son is a pivotal moment and sits within this presentation as a necessary touchstone. The responsibility to ‘pass’ a custom between generations is a great one. Tama highlights the integrity and importance of young people as cultural bearers today.
Flitcroft’s film raises important awareness around differing forms of communication and value systems that interconnect with cultural practice. Utilising three languages in its production - New Zealand sign language, te Reo Māori, – and English Tama exemplifies important collaborative practices that centre the disabled experience as not a hindrance in filmmaking but an expansive opportunity to share inclusive forms of story-telling.
Atong Atem’s experimentation with textiles, screenprinting and expanded photography reaches new heights in A Facet for Every Turn (2022). Hovering at nearly 5 metres tall, the larger than life imagery of African women in custom dress and family photographs create a dreamlike, weightless state. Printed on opulent silk georgette Atem’s images amalgamate portraiture with abstraction in a site specific installation. Six panels encase a hexagonal shape somewhat ‘entrapping’ the images of these women and families but in its veiled and large scale form escape from one panel and into the other. By creating this fleeting and ethereal state for her images, Atem challenges Western conventions of photographic portraiture while emphasising her connection to her diasporic culture and community. She adopts a decolonial approach to her photography emphasizing her reclaiming of African bodies through contemporary studio portraiture.
Apple of My Eye (2020) by Marikit Santiago reimagines Michelangelo’s Pietà, where the Virgin Mary cradles the lifeless body of Christ. In Santiago’s dualportrait, she reflects herself across the frame, transforming the sacred tableau. On the left panel, she assumes the role of the Virgin Mary, tenderly nursing her youngest daughter, Sarita. On the right, a tightly coiled python nestles against her collarbone—a potent allusion to the biblical tale of Eve’s temptation, the serpent’s whisper that ushered original sin into Eden. Santiago’s approach to painting and collaborating with her children is an intentional act to shift the balance of
hierarchical structures that have dictated power dynamics, specifically those of mothers. By encouraging her children to create marks and impressions on her paintings Santiago is challenging traditional norms in the western canon and highlighting the richness of Filipino culture, tradition and lore.
Vietnamese-American artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s film The Boat People (2020) is set in an unspecified post-apocalyptic future at the precarious edge of humanity’s possible extinction. Led by a strong-willed and resourceful little girl, the film follows a band of children across beaches, memorials and through forests collecting objects of reverence along the way. Nguyen’s expansive practice investigates the narrative potency of storytelling through the mediums of video and sculpture. Grounded in archival research and community engagement, his work critically engages with inherited histories and what he considers ‘counter-memory’. The Boat People was filmed in Bataan, a northern island of the Philippines that hosted thousands of refugees after the Vietnam War. The film unfolds a series of objects found within and around the land— founded through war, migration, and its own endurance. Nguyen is drawn to objects that hold and tell tales. His work delves into uniquely universal stories held by these artifacts of a colonial past while also reflecting on the ways in which they imprint themselves upon our collective memory.
Bhenji Ra’s multidisciplinary practice pushes the boundaries of dance, film and performance deeply rooting itself in community led collaboration whilst manifesting ideas on queerness, sexuality, ancestral learnings, and the filipina diaspora.
Biraddali Dancing on the Horizon (2024) traces a journey of ancestral and intergenerational knowledge, unfolding through movement and memory. It begins with an intimate passage shared between Ra and her mentor/ collaborator, Sitti Airia Sangkula Askalani-Obeso—a revered Tausug elder and custodian of the pangalay, a pre-Islamic dance tradition of the Tausug people of the Sulu Archipelago of the Philippines.
Within this work, a lexicon of movement emerges—one that entwines gendered gestures with the echoes of colonial past and present across the AsiaPacific. Biraddali Dancing on the Horizon extends Ra’s ongoing inquiry into performance as a space of resistance, unsettling dominant Western frameworks and critically engaging with expressions of gender and sexual difference.
Ra considers her work an act of ‘radical togetherness’ and this is further exemplified in the addition of a bespoke ceremonial mat created by Ra and a number of elders in Davao, Philippines this year. Learning the ancient techniques of habi weaving this 4 x 4 metre offering is a physical manifestation of knowledge systems that are held by local artisans and elders.
In a special partnership with The Mercury each week Shared Skin will include daily screenings of Jumana Manna’s 2022 film Foragers. Connecting ideas of plant life as kinship systems and food as a political pursuer Manna’s feature length film probes settlement lines and the histories that are created through the act of sharing a meal.
Foragers reveals the quiet, yet ongoing struggles and everyday acts of resistance surrounding the practice of gathering wild edible plants along borders between Palestine/Israel. Shot across the Golan Heights, the Galilee, and Jerusalem, the film fluidly weaves fiction, documentary, and archival footage to examine the entanglement of ecological conservation and political control.
At its core, the film traces the fraught journeys of ’akkoub and za’atar (thyme)—plants deeply embedded in Palestinian culinary and cultural traditions yet placed under Israeli nature protection laws. Foragers capture both the resilience and defiance embedded in these traditions. By reframing the terms of preservation, the film poses urgent questions about the politics of extinction and champions the actions of those trying to preserve tradition for future generations.
Each of the 11 artists in Shared Skin engage in a deliberate practice of creating essential space for networks of families striving to preserve and uphold ancestral values. What unfolds across each gallery is a gesture to uplift a culture that has been disvalued or intentionally erased from our shared history. Underlying the show’s premise is an ideology that sovereignty lies in these worldly knowledge systems and must be shared with our kin. Shared Skin attempts to examine social relationships beyond the immediate family, presenting networks shaped by the material conditions of social life. Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu broadly described the relationship between role models as a ‘strategy of belonging’; here, we can also see the family as a mode of self-selected references, replacing that of the biological. It is here that the social becomes the material for art.
Rayleen Forester Curator
Hana Pera Aoake (NZ)
Hana Pera Aoake (Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Hinerangi, Waikato/Tainui) is an artist, writer and mum to a cheeky three year old. Hana is based in Aotearoa and has been involved in a number of ARIs and occasionally organises events and publications within Kei te Pai press with Morgan Godfery. In 2020 they published their first book, A bath full of kawakawa and hot water with Compound Press. In 2024 Hana undertook a residency with Delfina Foundation in London and was a part of the Creative Australia and Creative New Zealand Digital art fellowship cohort. In 2025 they will be beginning a PhD at Auckland University of Technology and publishing a bunch of books with No More Poetry (AU), Discipline (AU) and Compound Press (NZ).
Hana Pera Aoake, Earth Maintenance (after Mierle Laderman Ukeles) (2022-ongoing), Shared Skin installation view, 2025, Adelaide Contemporary Experimental. Photography by Sam Roberts.
Atong Atem (AU)
Atong Atem is a South Sudanese artist who was born in Ethiopia and migrated to Australia as a child. With an ongoing interest in portraiture, Atem uses photography to explore and examine postcolonial practices among the African diaspora in Melbourne. Many of her photographs take the form of self-portraits and portraits of friends, as well as installation and video works exploring migrant stories, cultures and identities.
Atong Atem, A Facet for Every Turn, Shared Skin installation view, 2025, Adelaide Contemporary Experimental. Photography by Sam Roberts.
Jacob Boehme, KTB + the Narungga Family Choir (AU)
Jacob Boehme
Jacob Boehme is a critically acclaimed theatre maker and choreographer, from the Nharangga and Kaurna Nations, creating work for stage, screen, largescale public events and festivals. Jacob was the founding Creative Director of Yirramboi Festival, recipient of the 2018 Green Room Award for Curatorial Contribution to Contemporary and Experimental Arts. Jacob is the writer and performer of the critically acclaimed solo work Blood on the Dance Floor, recipient of the 2017 Green Room Award Best Independent Production, the artistic director of Wild Dog, recipient of the 2023 Ruby Award for Outstanding Community Event or Project and writer and director of Guuranda, a major new work commissioned and presented by Adelaide Festival 2024.
KTB (KC Taunoa-Brown)
KTB (KC Taunoa-Brown) is a Narungga / Kaurna and Māori (Ngāti Kahungunu) Musician, Sound Designer, Producer and DJ living and working in Naarm. KTB uses traditional song and language to create contemporary soundscapes, Hip Hop and RnB. KTB has also produced the song No Disrespect with older brother Yung Maynie, with more songs to come.
Narungga Family Choir
The Narungga Family Choir is a language revitalisation concept and program that reconnects Narungga and Kaurna ancestry across First Nations countries. Developed as part of Jacob Boehme’s dance theatre work Guuranda, commissioned by Adelaide Festival, the choir is a vehicle to bring Narungga family members together, to reunite, reconnect, learn language and sing up Country.
Jacob Boehme, KTB + the Narungga Family Choir, Dhargarri Buggi Buggilu (Tomorrow, a long time ago), Shared Skin installation view, 2025, Adelaide Contemporary Experimental. Photography by Sam Roberts.
Juanella Donovan (AU)
Juanella Donovan Nee McKenzie, also known as Nelly, is an Adnyamathanha, Luritja and Lower Southern Arrernte woman of South Australia.
She uses art to preserve stories and techniques which she now passes on to and shares her art practice with her four children. For Nelly, art is essential to maintaining connection to country and family.
Nelly’s artwork has been acquired by the National Museum of Australia, the National Museum of Scotland and by art collectors worldwide. She has been in numerous exhibitions locally and nationally, involved in community projects and was a finalist of the Ramsay Art Prize (AGSA).
Juanella Donovan, Continuum, Shared Skin installation view, 2025, Adelaide Contemporary Experimental. Photography by Sam Roberts.
Jared Flitcroft (NZ)
Screenwriter Jared Flitcroft (Ngāti Maniapoto) is known for the short films Tama (2017), Copper (2014) and Woman in Blue (2021). Flitcroft is trilingual, speaking all three of the official languages of Aotearoa (English, Te Reo Māori, New Zealand Sign Language). His short film Tama, which he made with a hearing co-director, has travelled to numerous film festivals around the world; which has led to ongoing videography work.
Jared Flitcroft, Tama, Shared Skin installation view, 2025, Adelaide Contemporary Experimental. Photography by Sam Roberts.
Jumana Manna (GER)
Jumana Manna is a visual artist and filmmaker. Her work explores how power is articulated, focusing on the body, land and materiality in relation to colonial inheritances and histories of place. Through sculpture, filmmaking, and occasional writing, Manna deals with the paradoxes of preservation practices, particularly within the fields of architecture, agriculture and law. Her practice considers the tension between the modernist traditions of categorisation and conservation and the unruliness of ruination, life and its regeneration. Jumana was raised in Jerusalem and lives in Berlin.
Jumana Manna, Foragers, 2022, 2K Video, Colour, 5.1 surround, 63mins. Courtesy of Jumana Manna and LUX, London.
Tuan Andrew Nguyen (USA)
Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s practice explores the power of memory and its potential to act as a form of political resistance. His practice is fueled by research and a commitment to communities that have faced traumas caused by colonialism, war, and displacement. Through his continuous attempts to engage with vanishing or vanquished historical memory, Nguyen investigates the erasures that the colonial project has brought to bear on certain parts of the world.
Tuan Andrew Nguyen, The Boat People, Shared Skin installation view, 2025, Adelaide Contemporary Experimental. Photography by Sam Roberts.
Bhenji Ra (AU)
Bhenji Ra is an Australian Filipina artist working at the intersections of dance, video and community activation. Rooted in trans-intercultural and intergenerational practice, her work deals with the unseen narratives of society seeking to offer new, decolonial, and fugitive possibilities of community and becoming.
Bhenji Ra, Biraddali Dancing on the Horizon, Shared Skin installation view, 2025, Adelaide Contemporary Experimental. Photography by Sam Roberts.
Steven Rhall (AU)
Steven Rhall is a post-conceptual artist of Taungurung heritage whose practice is informed by personal narrative including repressed traumas – as synonymous or through interaction, and intersecting with the outside world. These layers of personal history inform Rhall’s interdisciplinary approach, which sits at the intersection of First Nations art and the Western art canon. He explores the complex relationships between these worlds, particularly focusing on the idea of ‘Art’ and ‘Culture’ within a First Nations context and how these concepts may align or diverge.
Steven Rhall, Us (still), Shared Skin installation view, 2025, Adelaide Contemporary Experimental. Photography by Sam Roberts.
Marikit Santiago (AU)
Marikit Santiago creates scenarios in which customs, folklore and perspectives on faith, value and motherhood are challenged. Santiago’s immediate family are the subjects of her paintings, which are often also made in collaboration with her children. She uses recycled cardboard as the substrate for her works, a practice that reflects the Filipino ethos of ‘making do’ and, more specifically, the tradition of Balikbayan boxes, which Filipino migrants from around the world send back to their families in the Philippines.
Marikit Santiago, Apple of My Eye, Shared Skin installation view, 2025, Adelaide Contemporary Experimental. Photography by Sam Roberts.
Jennifer Tee (NED)
The artwork Jennifer Tee creates could be seen as material representations of the journey of the soul. Questioning the relationship between spirit and matter, she works to give form to the intangible through material experimentation and performative gestures. Her works are characterized by her experimental use of a wide variety of creative techniques. Tee combines collages made with dried tulip petals and sculptures including ceramic domes, knitted floor objects, and textile coverings with performances to uncover the fragile entanglements of life. The work responds to experiences of cultural hybridity, identity and language, and trade routes between people, commodities and objects from nature.
Jennifer Tee, Tao Magic/The Moon flows out to the Sea, Shared Skin installation view, 2025, Adelaide Contemporary Experimental. Photography by Sam Roberts.
