Featured Image: ‘The Beautiful Colours of my Culture’ by Sherrie Jones (2019)

The exhibition Have you met my sister shows the works of seven women from Australia, Finland, Russia and Namibia. Through their artistic search, the artists explore interpersonal relationships, such as family ties, friendships, intergenerational mother-daughter succession and knowledge transfer, and sisterhood between women.

The artists met on several occasions in Australia, Namibia and Finland, including places such as Fowlers Bay, Windhoek, Espoo, Veikkola, Adelaide, Streaky Bay, Mangetti Dune and Rovaniemi. Continuing relationships emerged around community-based and arts-based research projects and practical work processes across continents and national borders with a focus on peripheral communities, those defined by conditions of migration, social and geographical isolation.

Identities that constitute the notion of fluid family ties is explored through textiles, collages and projected images. The themes explore intimate and long lasting relationships that are shaped through family life, close friendships, professional practices, colleague relationships and eventually sisterhood amongst the artists. The artwork also embraces intergenerational ties that exist amongst the families of the artists, which came about over almost two decades. The exhibition works delve into fluid and undefined notions of family and sisterhood as experienced by the artists.

The layers of meanings, which are often connected to textile arts, express the identities connected to textiles and intimate spaces, including bodies, homes and rooms. These meanings will come forth through the conceptual textile and collage works expressing intimate social and place identities in Have you met my sister. The exhibition works evolved into dialogues and shared processes amongst the artists. As a result, it expresses the processing of the artists’ memories of the past, hopes for the future and the current dynamics that continue to nurture their relationships amongst one another and their families.