Volume: Bodies of Knowledge

<p dir="ltr">Volume: Bodies of Knowledge (2022-2023) was a curated exhibition emerging from the Community Reading Room project that employed a feminist phenomenological framework centering the lived experiences of Indigenous, bla(c)k, brown, women-of-colour artists whose experiential knowledge through the body informed their creative practice. Taking its cue from Julietta Singh's 2018 memoir No Archive Will Restore You, Volume shifted the emphasis away from the privileging of the written word towards an understanding of the knowledge that lives in the body. Bolatagici evoked "volume" as a thematic provocation inviting the artists to consider 'volume' as metaphor for: degrees of loudness, occupation of space, and anthologies of knowledge. Funded by Australia Council for the Arts the exhibiion was originally staged at Metro Arts Gallery in Brisbane from 12 February to 19 March 2022, and subsequently at Counihan Gallery in Melbourne from 2 September to 22 October 2023. For this exhibition, Bolatagici commissioned nine multidisciplinary artists working in Australia, Hawaiʻi, and Auckland: Dr Denise Chapman, Vasemaca Tavola, Emele Ugavule & collaborators, Jane Chang Mi, Dr Ka-Lai Chan, Laniyuk, Lia Pa'apaʻa, Shivanjani Lal, and Stéphanie Kabanyana Kanyandekwe. Two commissioned essays accompanied the exhibition: Decolonial border feminism and feminist subjectivity: a theory / manifesto in the flesh by Dr Lutfiye Ali and a summary of change by Vasemaca Tavola.</p><p dir="ltr"><br></p>