Archives are Hot! – Keynote with Jenna Lee

In this talk, Jenna Lee will share how her art practice navigates and transforms the archives of language, history, and family. Through processes of deconstruction and reconstruction, Lee reimagines colonial texts and family narratives, drawing out what is lost, overlooked, or suppressed. Her work reconfigures books and language as living material, opening space for new readings of the past and possibilities for the future.

Jenna Lee

Gulumerridjin (Larrakia), Wardaman, and KarraJarri woman of Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, and Anglo-Australian ancestry, Jenna Lee explores language, materiality, and the transformation of inherited narratives. Intrigued by what is lost in translation, she captures the unseen spaces between words through installations, works on paper, sculpture, and multimedia. Her practice reveals the hidden forces shaping history and identity, drawing attention to what time erodes and what collective memory suppresses.

Content note: This talk engages with colonial texts and misrepresentations of First Peoples' languages as well as family histories, which include sex work, racist policies (White Australia Policy) and blackbirding. The accompanying presentation contains images of people who have passed.

Photo: Installation view of Jenna Lee and Kojima Shouten’s Balarr (To become light) 2023 on display as part of the Melbourne Now exhibition at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Melbourne from 24 March – 20 August 2023. Image: Sean Fennessy, courtesy of the artist and MARS Gallery, Melbourne

Next Wave

Next Wave is a leading not-for-profit arts organisation dedicated to supporting early-career artists working across multiple art forms. Next Wave plays a defining role in the Australian arts landscape by empowering and advocating for early-career and experimental artistic practice in Australia.

This event is part of Next Wave's ALL School programming. ALL School is an artist-led learning program designed to facilitate knowledge sharing and idea swapping.

CAST

CAST produces art research that critically engages with social and public spheres with a particular interest in how artistic practices intersect with issues of equity, access and democracy.

Accessibility

The RMIT Garden Building is located at Level 5, Building 10, RMIT University 376-392 Swanston Street, Melbourne. This is a wheelchair accessible building with an elevator located behind Streat Cafe on Bowen Street (between Swanston and Russell streets).

Some on-street parking is available on LaTrobe Street. Trams operate along Swantson Street – get off at RMIT University stop and go to Bowen Street via La Trobe Street.

Artists in the Archive is supported by City of Melbourne