What would it take for you to leave your homeland and travel great distances to another country, knowing you may never return?
What would you choose to take with you?
What might your migration mean for others already living where you chose to go?
Explore the delights and difficulties which arise when humans leave their homelands to inhabit the homelands of others.
Stories are told through reflections on objects from “before” and by women coming together to cook and share bread from their different cultures.
These women acknowledge that regardless of where they have come from, they have all made their homes on the land of Arrernte people.
We have given a lot of thought to how museums might tell these stories. We want to be careful that we don’t simplify, decontextualize or re-imagine the experiences of the women who share their stories in the exhibition.
Through images, objects and texts, museums do not simply preserve and re-enact an ‘objective’ past but can (deliberately or inadvertently) contribute to the creation of a one-dimensional history and national identity.
New Voices, New Relationships shows the global motivations for migration, crossing country, culture and different periods of time. It also provides a reflective and safe space to think about how cultural heritage, languages, beliefs and family connections influence our self-perceptions and our perceptions of other people – perceptions that can lead to discovery, confusion, prejudice, understanding and/or acceptance.
These stories are the new voices of our museum. More fundamentally, though, are the new relationships that have been nurtured as we have worked together, relationships between ourselves, the women whose stories we tell and the Arrernte women on whose homelands we all now live. It is our hope that, in the same way, this exhibition nurtures new relationships between all of us and our visitors.
We thank Anileen Bensted, Jovita Price, Leony Bowey, Mona Ulak, Marguerite Baptiste-Rooke, Flora Mpofu, Maya Cifali, Karin Berschl, Pragita Juneja, Annie-Margaret Andeba, Dow Saphaothong Williams, and Marsha Maule-Murphy for guiding the production of this woman-centred exhibition.