First in Family (after Munari)

<p dir="ltr"><b>Background </b>This photographic series comprises 14 prints that reimagine Bruno Munari's 1944 work "Seeking Comfort in an Uncomfortable Chair." Munari's original series critiqued the tension between aesthetics and functionality in furniture design, using the metaphor of coming home tired to find an uncomfortable chair. Transforming this metaphor into a commentary on first-generation university students' educational experiences, Bolatagici draws upon lived experience to examine how students—particularly those from Black, Indigenous, and racialised backgrounds—navigate institutional systems not designed to accommodate their needs or epistemologies, constantly seeking comfort within fundamentally inhospitable spaces where their embodied knowledge is systematically devalued within a western institutional framework. <br><br><b>Research Significance</b> Bolatagici's work makes visible the often-invisible labour and discomfort experienced by first-generation students from racialised backgrounds navigating higher education. By problematising resilience narratives, she shifts focus from individual adaptation to institutional responsibility, asking not "how can students better fit the system?" but "how must the system change to genuinely support diverse ways of knowing and being?" Originally conceived as part of the Black Tourmaline Project (2019), presented by The Community Reading Room at Testing Grounds, Melbourne, the work was supported by Creative Victoria and the Carstairs Prize (2018). The series was subsequently presented in the 2025 exhibition 'de-centre re-centre' at the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, University of Western Australia. <br><br><b>Research Contribution</b> This work sits within Bolatagici's larger practice exploring transcultural notions of value and the movement of racialised bodies. Through The Community Reading Room (founded 2013), Bolatagici has developed an ongoing discursive project generating discussion about archives, value, and how institutions privilege particular epistemologies, directly confronting educational inequity through collaborative, participatory practice.</p>