Thank you Sofia Pozdniakova, Gabriele Tai, Giacomo Salis and Cosmogram for giving live music to My Mother’s County and Tide of Returns last night at Ocean Space – blown away by your improvised singing and stringing the shell dolls into song. #khadijavonzinnenburgcarroll #venicebiennale
gabriel tai and others playing live in from my mother‘s country in an hour at ocean space. full program: /oceanspace-activities-performance-sonicreturn
This biennale has been approached as an opportunity to decentre the author and create a centrifugal force that brings in a polyphony of voices
What emerges are alternative strategies for making and presenting work, where collectivity, care, and complexity take precedence over singular authorship and easily consumable narratives
#Repatriates #Restitution #DecolonizeMuseums #SustainableFutures
Together, we find ways together of addressing the constant injustices imposed by those in power who continue to disenfranchise and extract
This extends beyond the exhibition space into a broader commitment to solidarity with ongoing struggles, including the resistance against the genocide in Palestine, recognising these as interconnected sites of colonial violence 🇵🇸
As active participants of the Biennale, we use our platform to stand in solidarity against the Genocide Pavillion
#Repatriates #Restitution #DecolonizeMuseums #SustainableFutures
Our work, as the Repatriates, is shaped through multiple perspectives
From insiders and outsiders to different positions of power and privilege
We work together in order to understand the long durée of violence that continues to structure contexts of cultural exposition
As a comparative study, Repatriates brings southern African and Australian struggles into conversation through collaboration and shared inquiry
#Repatriates #Restitution #DecolonizeMuseums #Sustainablefutures
While we could have created an exhibition of highly aesthetic, commercially attractive, easy to package and sell works, we chose a more complex and demanding process of presenting our work. What emerged is an exhibition that resists the commodification of the artistic process and instead invites critical reflection, where meaning is not immediately given but unfolds through engagement and dialogue
Through shared experiences, the Tide of Returns exhibition invites the visitors in worlds that are not only curated, but immersive and intentional
#Repatriates #DecolonizeMuseums #Restitution #SustainableFutures
It is through the reclamation of practices, cultures, and ancestors that a new way forward is envisaged collectively
The Repatriates ask what futures might emerge in settler colonies when Indigenous knowledge is not marginalised or archived, but actively lived and carried forward through contemporary artistic practice
This exhibition is more than an artistic expression; it is a ceremonial act of reclamation. It is a form of homecoming that moves beyond activism, offering a more profound form of resistance. The exhibition opened on March 27th,2026 with a reinterpreted purification ritual led by Noeleen Danjibana Lalara and Annabell Demalmerrangguma Amagula, Elders of the Indigenous community of Groote Eylandt (Australia).
By placing the dolls in the sand, they transformed the dune into a vast living landscape of totems, clans, and songlines
#Repatriates #Restitution #DecoloniseMuseums #SustainableFutures
Today, artists are engaged in a reckoning with history that attempted to erase them, their forefathers, and their culture
Across southern Africa and Australia, the Repatriates trace how this struggle continues to unfold, not as something resolved, but as an ongoing process of reclaiming practices, histories, and presence in the face of enduring colonial violence
The Repatriates explore the struggle to decolonise by rooting the practice in resistance and reclamation of indigenous narratives and presences
#Repatriates #Decolonize #Restitution #SustainableMuseums
Stories held in motion 🎞️🌊
In Tide of Returns, film becomes a vessel for the voices of the Dadikwakwa-kwa people, capturing stories that live within bodies, land, and sea. Through moving image, ancestral knowledge is carried across generations, allowing the presence of the dolls to extend beyond form into lived narrative.
A medium of memory, where story, sound, and spirit endure.
#TideOfReturns #OceanSpace #Dadikwakwa-kwa #FilmAsMemory #Repatriation
Carried by sound, held in form 🔊🌊
In *Tide of Returns*, the voices of the Dadikwakwa-kwa dolls move beyond the visual—becoming part of a sonic landscape that carries memory across water. Through song and sound, they speak as ancestral messengers, holding stories of continuity, care, and connection.
A chorus that lingers, echoing between bodies, land, and sea.
#TideOfReturns #OceanSpace #SoundAndMemory #Repatriation #Dadikwakwa-kwa
Tides shift, stories return 🌊
On March 27th, Tide of Returns opened at Ocean Space: an immersive landscape of sand, shells, sound, and memory.
The dunes carry the grounding presence of Noeleen Lalara’s land, while the Dadikwakwa-kwa dolls emerge as ancestral messengers; holding stories of continuityand cultural survival.
A quiet homecoming, unfolding across land, sea, and generations.
#TideOfReturns #OceanSpace #Repatriation #Dadikwakwa-kwa #ArtAsResistance
Zoom into the intricate designs of Dadikwakwa-kwa, the shell dolls made by the
Warnindilyakwa women of Groote Eylandt: living
objects, custodians of sacred knowledge and
stories to be passed down to future generations. #Repatriates #Restitution #OceanSpace #DecoloniseMuseums
