By Biennale of Sydney
22nd Biennale of Sydney: NIRIN
Owed to Diaspora(s) Owed to Diaspora(s) (2020) by Hannah Catherine JonesBiennale of Sydney
About the artist
Hannah Catherine Jones (aka Foxy Moron)
Born 1987 in Doncaster, England.
Lives and works in London, England
Bajan
Hannah Catherine Jones is a London based artist, scholar, multi-instrumentalist, radio presenter and DJ, composer, conductor and founder of Peckham Chamber Orchestra – a community project established in 2013. Jones is currently an AHRC DPhil scholar at Oxford University for which the ongoing body of work The Oweds will be presented as a series of live and recorded audio-visual episode compositions using disruptive sound as a methodology of institutional decolonisation.
Owed to Diaspora(s) Installation ImageBiennale of Sydney
Owed to Diaspora(s)
Jones’ immersive video installation Owed to Diaspora(s) is an atmospheric blending and traversing of cosmic scenes to actions of freedom, colonial histories to possible futuristic visions and popular culture. Empowering women and diaspora, this re-writing of visual legacies and the world seen through different eyes, brings together scenes of collective action, from protest to music-making.
The installation at the National Art School invites us to rest in an immersive visual experience where time passes at varying paces as attempts are made to bend the way popularist ideologies are often ignorant to alternative experiences of the world.
Owed to Diaspora(s) Installation ImageBiennale of Sydney
"I am attempting to use my position, privilege and powers to tell a story, one of many stories, that I see, hear and feel. As we continue the perpetual work to uncover the African diasporic stories, we are absorbing, accumulating, accessing an ever-deepening, ever-nearing, never quite reaching…
...The Oweds are my ongoing attempts to own a narrative, one that is simultaneously joyful, traumatic, depressive, hopeful, non-linear, and that is often owned and obfuscated by white noise.
The story is in our DNA. How can we uncover, unlock, download it?
Presence. Perseverance. Survivance. ...
Owed to Diaspora(s) Installation ImageBiennale of Sydney
...The local swells and bursts into the global into the celestial. How can this be observed?
Mundana – the archaic ‘celestial’, must be placed in dialogue with its contemporary, ‘banal’. The repercussions of this syzygy can be observed in the rhythms – through the body, through the universe, and through instruments. ...
Owed to Diaspora(s) Installation ImageBiennale of Sydney
... You may hear an uncanny sound, voice-like but non-human. Searching, shrieking, scanning the air for pitch, snatching at rhythm, grasping for the truth whilst trusting intuitive signs. This is what it feels like to play the theremin. This is what it feels like to tell this story.
Owed to Diaspora(s) is the latest version of this attempted, singular, collective, historical, contemporary stories.'
- Hannah Catherine Jones
Tap to explore
Navigate through the installation space at the National Art School or take the NIRIN Social Tour of Owed to Diaspora(s) with Sebastian Henry-Jones, Curatorial Assistant for the 22nd Biennale of Sydney.
Owed to Diaspora(s), 2020
mixed-media installation dimensions variable
Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney with generous assistance from the British Council
Courtesy the artist
