MUMA | Monash University Museum of Art invites you to Unsettlement. The exhibition will be opened by Michael Tawa, architect and Professor of Architecture at the University of Sydney, Australia.

28 April – 7 July 2020

Opening function: 2 May 2018, 6 – 8pm

Artists: Dana Awartani (SA), Monica Bonvicini (IT/DE), Aliansyah Caniago (ID), Jasmina Cibic (SI/UK), Forensic Architecture (UK), Hiwa K (IQ), Jill Magid (US), Hayley Millar-Baker (AUS), Archie Moore (AUS), Amie Siegel (US)

Unsettlement is an international group exhibition that explores the ways that power manifests through architecture and in the built environment. The artworks presented register the material force and histories of architecture, and encourage a productive sense of upheaval and re-appraisal.

Unsettlement features artists from Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, United States of America, Italy, United Kingdom, Iraq, Slovenia and Australia. Through their engagement with specific architectural forms, the works in the exhibition offer insights into distinct cultural contexts, histories and social struggles. A number of defining characteristics of our contemporary condition emerge;namely the effects of accelerating globalisation and mass urbanisation, the legacies of colonial occupation across the world, and the control enacted by state and economic infrastructures.

‘Unsettlement’ is conceived as both a contemporary condition – in which our claim to the spaces we occupy is increasingly precarious – and a strategy for artistic, social and political engagement. From subtle gestures of reclamation to more radical remodelling, the works in Unsettlement strive to confuse architecture’s functionality, undermine its authority or explode its mythologies. In doing so, they make visible the power dynamics and infrastructures shaping our world.

Curated by Charlotte Day, Shelley McSpedden and Elise Routledge.