LOSS ARTISTS: DAMON AMB, MIRIAM CABELLO, BLAK DOUGLAS, JAGATH DHEERASEKARA AND LINDA SOK WWW.CASULAPOWERHOUSE.COM 24 APRIL – 18 JULY 2021 MORNING MELODIES & CLASSIC FILMS 1 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 Powerhouse Rd, Introduction 1 ustralia is a country where This booklet features an essay by Casula NSW 2170 a large percentage of the each of the artists and is an important (enter via Shepherd St, Damon AMB: Cryptic Whispers 2 population have moved here companion to the exhibition. The artists Liverpool) A from other parts of the world. In the comment, from their own experiences, Miriam Cabello: The Final Embrace 5 Tel 02 8711 7123 Liverpool Council area 41% of people on difficult topics including war, reception@ Blak Douglas: Intergenerational Fauna 9 stated on the 2016 Census that they torture, destruction and the stolen casulapowerhouse.com were born overseas. generations, offering personal insights Jagath Dheerasekara: 12 into reconnecting with culture, home, casulapowerhouse.com The Wall That Travels Within Me LOSS is an exhibition exploring the family, and friends. The exhibition is impact of leaving a homeland, by those Linda Sok: Questions for My Sister, 16 led by the artist’s voice in framing their My Mother, My Grandmother who intimately know what that feels artworks, and this booklet allows the like. It features a range of artworks Public Programs 20 artists to communicate their works in by artists with strong connections to the way they wish; some essays discuss Acknowledgements 21 Western Sydney, including Damon AMB, the specific histories and events which Miriam Cabello, Blak Douglas, Jagath © Copyright authors, artists, inform their experiences, while others contributors, and Casula Dheerasekara and Linda Sok. Each offer more poetic and conversational Powerhouse Arts Centre. of these artists explore the reasons, No material, whether written Content Warning: reflections on their feelings. or photographic can be The content of this booklet features artists narrating impacts and losses of leaving their reproduced without the their own stories of loss of homeland and forced homelands, and the intergenerational It is important that artists are provided permission of the artists, migration. If you are experiencing emotional distress authors and Casula Powerhoue impacts. Some of the artists use the support and freedom to tell stories help is available. Please contact Lifeline. Arts Centre. Opinions expressed their art to directly communicate in the ways they believe their stories in the publication are those of Lifeline provides confidential crisis support that is the authors and not necessarily accessible 24 hours a day. We encourage any person in the difficult political histories which need to be told, and to be in control those of Casula Powerhouse Australia who is contemplating suicide, experiencing have informed their loss, while others of their telling. We hope the exhibition Arts Centre. emotional distress, or caring for someone in crisis to make works capturing the feelings and this collection of essays help Published by Casula call or text Lifeline. Powerhouse Arts Centre, Regardless of your age, gender, ethnicity, sexual and emotions of loss. While each have audiences appreciate each of the April 2021 orientation, or religion, trained crisis supporters are unique approaches to communicating artworks from a unique angle, and to ready to listen, support, and help you work through what’s on your mind. 13 11 14 this theme, it is making art that see the political moments from a more provides a language for expressing the personal perspective. complicated social-political issues and events which continue to shape their – Jenny Cheeseman & Luke Létourneau lives. We would like to acknowledge the Cabrogal Clan of the Darug Nation who are the traditional custodians of the land that now resides within Liverpool City Council’s boundaries. We acknowledge that this land was also accessed by peoples of the Dhurawal and Darug Nations. Cover image: Jagath Dheerasekara, ‘Bungarusa panthera: a hybrid’ 2021. Video Still. Courtesy the artist 2 1 how the subjects were abandoned to totalitarian Islamic Republic regime, the darkness. which has forced a large number CRYPTIC WHISPERS As I pass by things in the middle of of artists to flee their homeland. It DAMON AMB dark night – creatures, elements, or is dangerous to speak your mind, (b. 1979. Tehran, Iran) different things - I see myself, I see especially as an Iranian artist. However, moments of my life after I left my through metaphor, artists express home country. For me, photography feelings and issues without articulating is the most powerful form of them directly. In more contemporary I am inspired by the powerful words of suffering in the form of human right art. Photography transforms the art and literature, this trend remains Ahmad Shamlou. ‘I wish’ is used a lot violations and restrictions, I spent momentary lapse of being into eternal strong as political and social pressures in his poetry and so many poets have months being processed in Australia’s memories. continue to permeate all institutions of used it in different ways. I wish there immigration detention facilities. I was culture. Nima Yooshij, Ahmad Shamlou, I see myself in the way the cow is was justice in the world. held in two detention centres before I Forough Farrokhzad, Akhavan Saales looking, lost in the dark, unidentified in was released and granted a protection are some of our contemporary poets limbo. I see myself in the unidentified visa. I was released with a bridging and authors who have used metaphor I wish, I wish, I wish there was cloth wrapped in a strange, human visa, then after 5 years I got my in their works. Because metaphor has justice in the world. shape; am I dead there or did they protection visa in 2018 which I’m still long been present in our art, Iranian chop and leave me? I see myself in a When things pass by and pass by on. After my release from detention my audiences are accustomed to looking basement at the National Art School and pass by family sent me my camera. for deeper meaning and interpreting that brings me back to the basements and I’m getting older and older and Walking and photographing Sydney imagery. I take the photos that I do used by the current regime, ones that older during the night became a regular because I am always looking for I’ve been assaulted in and so many past time for me. This evolved into the deeper meaning in the scenes and without being seen by the people others have been tortured to death. Night Series, which is featured in this images that I experience. and the world I am hidden in these different shapes exhibition. The Night Series started and I’m getting rusted and rusted of essence and form. I am looking at Feelings are often unfolding in my as my coping mechanism to express and rusted myself. images, and whether the image is my art through photography. I feel straight-forward or abstract it is a – by Damon AMB, Metaphor is very important in my compelled to capture these images direct reflection of my memory or inspired by Ahmad Shamlou art, and is important throughout the because they evoke traces of hidden experiences. ‘The Butterfly Effect,’ in history my country’s art. It is abundant dangers, phobias, taboos, traumas and particular, represents a transformative desolation. in the works of famous Persian authors Each of the photograph in LOSS moment in my life when something and poets of the Middles Ages such embodies feelings associated with My subjects, captured spontaneously seemingly random set off a chain as Omar Khayyam, Ferdowsi, Hafez, fleeing my homeland of Iran in 2013 as they emerge from the darkness, reaction that changed my destiny. I Rumi, Khaqani, Attar, Nezāmi, Rudaki and becoming an asylum seeker in are starkly illuminated by the flash of was in the second detention centre in and many others. Over the centuries, Australia. I was born in 1979, during the the camera or coloured a blood red. Western Australia at the ex-Air Force Iranian artists have experienced Iranian Revolution, and I was raised Subjects that seem harmless, ordinary base called Curtin. It was a terrible suffocating political pressures under during the eight-year war period. or simple become uncertain, ominous time there for me. I became very punitive laws. This trend has continued Having lived in Iran where the political and complex. I hope they provoke vulnerable and I got a very terrible since the 1979 formation of the situation has given birth to much thought and lead audiences to wonder lung infection. I received no medical 2 3 CRYPTIC WHISPERS assistance. It just got worse and worse installation for LOSS, for the first two THE FINAL EMBRACE and worse. On top of that there was a weeks of the exhibition I will also be MIRIAM CABELLO fire reduction hazard burn in the bush living on-site at Casula Powerhouse (b. Santiago, Chile 1966) there and the smoke increased my and writing my stories directly on the suffering. I was dying in a way. I was North East wall, in the white space really dying. There was a girl working between my photographs. These The loss of family, extended family and Ironically the photo was taken in in the kitchen and she had a beautiful words, written in Farsi in a semi- friends, is the ultimate melancholy of September 1969. Fours year later, on butterfly tattoo on her neck. She could cryptic way, will be spontaneous forced migration. that fateful month of September 11, sense I was not well, physically or and in response to conversations 1973, the Chilean Military violently mentally. She told me: and feelings I experience during this ‘The Final Embrace’ is a recently completed drawing of my cousins and overthrew the democratically elected ‘Damon, this shall pass and things will time and as I consider themes of myself translated from a photo taken government of Salvador Allende.