BONYI - LIVING CULTURE
Bonyi: Living Culture
Curated by Dominique Chen and Libby Harward
Bonyi-Bonyi have been a foundational part of our governance and kinship since time immemorial—connecting and interweaving our far reaching nations, languages and cultures from across the country, for millennia. If you know how to look, bonyi ‘highways’ still map the landscape, showing the walking paths that brought thousands of our ancestors together for trade, ceremony, marriage, celebration and inter-sovereign politics. The bountiful and nutritious nuts, sustaining both physically and culturally, generations after generations.
Bonyi, like everything in the more-than-human world, is kin. And it is not a coincidence that the same settler colonial violence and destruction that was enacted upon our people was shown also to the land/waters, and to the sacred bonyi. Logging, and the general mismanagement of Country by Second Peoples and governments—along with the dispersal, control and assimilation of Aboriginal peoples, has placed fractures in our relational connections.
While the destructive pressures on people and environments persist, Bonyi: Living Culture is testimony to the ongoing and regenerative connection of our people to the Bonyi, to our culture, and to each other. It is also an active statement of our uninterrupted sovereignty and ancestral belonging. In the words of Wakka Wakka, Butchulla, Gorang Gorang artist and academic Shannon Brett, we “continue to live with and practise plant based traditions as sovereign people upon [our] own ancient lands”. (1)
Bonyi: Living Culture gathers together past and contemporary bonyi stories, perspectives and relationships, through the creative, cultural works of Indigenous artists Aunty Beverly Hand,BJ Murphy, Jo-Anne Driessens, Shannon Brett, Libby Harward, Dominique Chen and Kieron Anderson, on Country that has hosted the artists’ families and ancestors for celebration and business since time immemorial. Through this coming together on Country we continue in our ancestors’ footsteps to live, share and grow culture.
The exhibition will also feature an extensive public program delivered in collaboration with Brush Turkey Enterprises, that will engage and emplace the works within the local area and community. The gallery shop will present an exclusive range of specially curated, bonyi-inspired works from Indigenous artists and allies, Uncle Noel Blair, Cholena Hughs, Brydie Gorden, Jason Murphy and Karen Shaw.
Bonyi: Living Culture will be held at Munnimbah-dja (Welcome-place), and coincide with the duration of the bonyi fruiting season. The exhibition will be open to the public from the 5th February to the 27th of March, and will include an opening celebration on the 12th of February.
(1) Shannon Brett in Kindred Sprits: Plants and People, State Library of Queensland, 2021.
