UNSEEN Women Exhibition: lived experiences of violence, disability & homelessness

Between 5-28 August 2025, the NSW Parliament House Fountain Court Gallery will become a powerful space of truth-telling, healing and resistance as it hosts the exhibition of artworks created by the UNSEEN Women’s Artist Group.

You are invited to attend the exhibition launch at 1:30pm on 5 August 2025. This deeply moving exhibition is the culmination of years of co-creation through the UNSEEN Arts Hub — a mobile arts initiative that centres the lived experiences of women whose stories too often go unheard: women who have endured homelessness, violence, and systemic discrimination, and who now stand as artists, advocates, and community leaders.

The women whose works feature in this exhibition are diverse in every sense — First Nations, LGBTQIA+, culturally and linguistically diverse, women with disability, and older women — all of whom have experienced housing insecurity and other intersecting forms of marginalisation. Together, they have transformed trauma into testimony, pain into protest, and silence into song.

Each piece on display bears witness to the realities of hidden homelessness, of lives shaped by displacement, poverty, domestic and family violence, and societal neglect. Using materials such as fabric, thread, photography, mixed media and natural fibres, these artists have produced bold and intimate reflections of their journeys. Their stories are visceral: a woman sleeping under a tree as spirits watch over her; a transgender woman navigating discrimination with grace and flair; an elder who turned to weaving and storytelling to rebuild her life; a survivor painting her trauma into layers of resistance and hope.

This exhibition not only honours the resilience and creative power of these women, it invites policymakers, advocates, and the public into a deeper understanding of what it means to be unseen — and why that must change. These women are not anonymous statistics; they are mothers, sisters, Aunties, daughters, and grandmothers. Their artworks ask audiences to see, to listen, and to act.

Presented by the Museum of Understanding Through Tolerance and Inclusion (MUTTI), this exhibition follows the group’s landmark presentation at the 2025 United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in New York. Now, with their stories returning home, the Parliament becomes the next venue where art will challenge stigma and push for policy that ensures housing is a human right for all.

Thank you to Alex Greenwich MP - Member for Sydney, DV NSW, Womens & Girls' Emergency Centre and Bonnie Support Services for supporting the opening event.