Talking back and moving forward: curating Pacific arts and culture

Recorded Sunday 21 January at the Chau Chak Wing Museum
To celebrate the last week of the exhibition, 'Ömie barkcloth: Pathways of nioge', Aunty Sana Balai will reflect on her experience with Ömie artists and their vibrant nioge (barkcloth) in Australia, including her involvement in the first institutional exhibition of their work, 'Wisdom of the Mountain: Art of the Ömie' at The National Gallery of Victoria (2009).
Aunty Sana will then bring her unique perspective to bear on a vision for the future of the sector, covering concepts such as ‘the living museum’, and issues of cultural safety, cultural maintenance, gender, meaning/valuation, and the relationships between contemporary makers and contemporary and historic museum collections.
About the speaker
Aunty Sana (Susan) Balai is a Bougainville elder born to the Nakaripa clan of the Hakö peoples from Buka Island. She initially trained and worked as an Environmental Research Analyst, Analytical Laboratories for Bougainville Copper Limited, a subsidiary of Rio Tinto. Moving to Australia in 1990, she transitioned her career into the cultural sector. Sana is on the Executive Board of ICOM (International Council of Museums) Australia as a representative of the Pacific Islands Museums Association and has now worked for over two decades in Pacific arts as a curator in some of Australia’s most high-profile museums and galleries.
Aunty Sana is currently the museum curator of the Living Museum of Logan at the Kingston Butter Factory Cultural Precinct with the Logan City Council in Queensland. She curated the first Omie barkcloth exhibition, 'Wisdom of the Mountain: Art of the Omie at the National Gallery' of Victoria in 2009.