Making the invisible enormous

At the Chau Chak Wing Museum, on site at the University of Sydney, the Biennale of Sydney’s Rememory exhibition asks us to reconsider who gets remembered, and who history has conveniently misplaced.

Ema Shin’s Hearts of Absent Women makes that question impossible to ignore. Women made small by record-keeping are rendered enormous. Swollen with pearls, beads, embroidery, colour and labour.

The contrast is the point.

Small names, huge lives.

Tiny omissions, enormous consequences.

Delicate materials, monumental form.

For centuries, women’s work was dismissed as domestic, decorative, or minor. Here, women’s materials become vast and confrontational.

Isn’t there something wonderful about refusing to remain a footnote in someone else’s story?

When history has made so many people small, art can make them enormous.

x Victoria

About Victoria Hall

Victoria Hall is an English-born, Australian-based writer and illustrator. She is the creator of three picture books for children, Penny Prickles at Coogee Beach, Eggy Peggy Has Lost Her Leggy and The Fairy Beasts. For more information, check out her really outdated bio here.