Ash in the Ancestral Mouth is an installation that translates the artist’s native language of Balawaian into physical vibration and material presence. A shallow vessel of water resonates with recorded speech, producing ripples that render language as movement; felt, unstable, and ephemeral. The water becomes a resonant surface where voice exceeds the mouth and enters the body of the space.

Across the gallery floor, charred copper fragments pressed into boulder fissures near a creek form a darkened ground, carrying traces of heat, pressure, and displacement. From the artist’s diasporic position in Australia, the work acts as a portal, an attempt to communicate across distance and time with his ancestors.

Exhibition Soundscape ︎︎︎