Taloi Havini and Margarida Mendes In Conversation

  • HaviniT_Habitat_1

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Past Event


This event was on Thu 20 May, 7pm

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Informed by the traditional knowledges of her birthplace, the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, Sydney-based artist Taloi Havini‘s practice reveals and responds to the violent colonial structures that have been imposed on the islands and their communities. She is joined in conversation by curator Margarida Mendes about her recent projects, considering, for example, the subversion of deep-sea mapping through indigenous knowledges and the significance of sound as a tool for relating to sea landscapes.

This event is part of our season Ways of Knowing: Water / Fluidity.

About Taloi Havini

Taloi Havini currently lives and works in Sydney, Australia. Havini’s work is often a personal response to the politics of location exploring contested sites and histories connected within Oceania; employing photography, sculpture, immersive video and mixed-media installations. Working with living contemporary practitioners she is actively involved in community projects in Bougainville and Australia, such as the Women’s Wealth project exhibition.  

Her artwork is held in public and private collections including the Sharjah Art Foundation, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, National Gallery of Victoria, KADIST, San Francisco, CA, USA. Taloi holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from the Canberra School of Art, Australian National University and has exhibited in Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Sharjah Biennial 13, UAE, 3rd Aichi Triennial, Nagoya, 8th & 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art Queensland Art Gallery | GoMA, Brisbane. 

About Margarida Mendes

Margarida Mendes’s research explores the overlap between infrastructure, ecology, experimental film, and sound practices, investigating environmental transformations and their impact on societal structures and cultural production. She is interested in exploring alternative modes of education and political resilience through her curatorial practice and activism. She was part of the curatorial team of the 11th Gwangju Biennale (2016), and the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial (2018). In 2019, she launched the exhibition series Plant Revolution! which explores different narratives of technological mediation of the interspecies encounter, and in 2016 she curated Matter Fictions, publishing a joint reader with Sternberg Press. She is consultant for environmental NGOs working on marine policy and deep sea mining and has directed several educational platforms, such as escuelita, an informal school at Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo – CA2M, Madrid; The Barber Shop project space in Lisbon dedicated to transdisciplinary research; and the ecological inquiry curatorial research platform The World In Which We Occur/Matter in Flux. She is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths University of London and a frequent collaborator of the online channel for exploratory video and documentary reporting Inhabitants-tv.org