Exhibitions
taypani milaythina-tu: Return to Country | Theresa Sainty
Biography
Theresa Sainty is a pakana woman from a large extended family from Flinders and Cape Barren Island with Ancestral connections to the North East coast of lutruwita/Tasmania.
Theresa has worked as a Cultural Advisor on several projects with Roar Film, the National Maritime Museum of Australia, the ABC, Mona and Mona Foma. Theresa has experience in the arts in an advisory capacity, and as a responding artist, articulating those responses in a combination of palawa kani and English.
Appointed for her knowledge and expertise in Aboriginal culture, Theresa currently sits on the TMAG Aboriginal Advisory Committee. As a Senior Indigenous Research Scholar at UTAS, Theresa’s doctorate is a continuation of her decades-long research as a linguistic consultant with the palawa kani language program.
Artist statement
rikawa niyakara (Bull Kelp Dreaming), 2022
The rikawa (kelp container) held in the British Museum, London (BM) and the Musée du Quai Branly, Paris (MQB) were made by our Ancestors to hold and carry water, a life sustaining resource and practice. Today, as the only known historic rikawa, they hold and carry Ancestral presences and knowledge.
The rikawa held by the MQB (taken in 1792) represents a time before invasion, while the rikawa held by the BM (taken in c.1840s) was crafted in the aftermath of great violence. They are tangible links to our Old People who cared for Sea-Country since the time of Muyini; to those who suffered so much at the hands of colonisers; and those whose strength we carry on through the revival and continuation of culture and language.
For the institutions that hold our cultural heritage captive, they are isolated objects that tell a story of ‘encounter’ and thus appropriated into colonial history. For us, the rikawa are our Ancestral cultural heritage. We imagine who made them; whose hands touched them; who drank from them. We hear the voices and cultural memory of our Old People held within them.
rikawa niyakara (Bull Kelp Dreaming) is our cry for rikawa to come home, to rest and reconnect. The model basket has been printed in resin from a 3D digital model. It acts as a place holder, representing the missing rikawa held so far from Country and Community for so long. It also speaks to the potential role of digital technology in recording cultural heritage and aiding in repatriation. The sound piece, spoken in palawa kani, is a call from us as pakana women, to rikawa; and from rikawa to us – a yarn that spans the past, present and future and a call to all of our cultural material waiting to taypani milaythina-tu (return to Country).