Jacqui Shelton (JS): I want to start with how the project Lying Inside began and your investigation of La Trobe University’s collection—what did you find that shaped the direction of this project?  

Roberta Joy Rich (RJR): I’m interested in archives and the traces of ‘othered’ narratives. I initially thought about the colonialist Charles La Trobe that the University is named after. He represents a violent history that is celebrated throughout the colonial state of Victoria, in statues and street names. What would be in a collection named after him? Core to the colonial strategy is not only the erasure and appropriation of Indigenous materials and knowledges, but their captivity. 

I approached the project broadly asking: how are Bla(c)k bodies represented in the collection? I was both surprised and bewildered when I discovered that the collection held Southern African cultural belongings. This stimulated many questions: How did these materials come to be here? Why are they still here? What are they? And who do they connect to?

Being of Southern African heritage and identifying as a diasporic African person, I know that public colonial Australian collections do not often represent African histories or speak to our migration stories. I’ve long been obsessed with the parallels between South Africa and Australia: from its shared racial segregation policies to Apartheid governance, as explored in my exhibition The Purple Shall Govern at Footscray Community Arts and Perth Institute of Contemporary Art. Finding these cultural materials within an institutional collection was a whole new experience for my research and practice. 

JS: I keep thinking about your mention of La Trobe, the colonialist, and how your project sits within a university named after him. The name makes explicit the history of the university as a Eurocentric, imperialist model for knowledge extraction and gatekeeping. The hegemony of universities historically de-legitimised non-Western epistemologies and ways of knowing. This project, and your wider practice, is so research-intensive yet abrasive to the colonial underpinning of the university. I’m curious to hear how you see research-as-agitation in your wider practice? 

RJR: When I research and develop my work I often think about speaking positions, who fails to speak or who is allowed to speak. I’ve engaged in rigorous research to transpose this thinking in the work, and for audiences to think about positionality too.

Western universities and collecting institutions are predicated on a violence that has been neutralised in such a way that we forget the origins of how belongings came into possession, and still remain in today’s collections. Simultaneously, universities acquire knowledge that becomes their property. It departs from this idea of a place of study and represents a class structure that holds property assets while continuing to extract and collect.

It was interesting to look into the ‘back end’ and access reality behind the scenes. It’s extremely difficult to gain access to the collection, let alone the politics—both within and outside the university—of being granted that access. The project prompted me to think a lot about access, the types of value placed on knowledge and materiality, and which forms are considered worthy.

Working with you and being granted access to the collection allowed me to begin to understand the barriers in place and consider how my work could speak back. I was talking to another curator about this project, sharing some of the documentation that has formed part of my research. The curator was surprised that I had access to administration about the collection. I laughed and shared that it may not have been possible if I was working with someone else, who did not respect the necessity of community being able to connect with their cultural belongings. Essentially, there are levels of gatekeeping, and whether within the arts or other fields, as the saying goes, the university is an ivory tower.

JS: I want to come back to what you discovered in the collection. This experience, combined with the mechanics of the institution, was both confronting and frustrating for you. I was curious if there were any of these moments of discomfort and frustration that you felt comfortable sharing in a more public way? 

RJR: It is really confronting in many ways. As a diasporic Southern African person, to experience such a unique moment of connection is compelling. But I was also extremely disturbed. Once I researched the Boer War further, the possession of these materials left little doubt for anything other than an inherently violent capture. 

After King Shaka Zulu’s reign, the Boere and British decided to go to war on land that was neither of theirs, and Australian soldiers eagerly took up arms in KwaZulu Natal. Considering white Australia’s treatment of First Nations communities and Country at the time, I can imagine soldiers coming across African villages with little regard. The British held concentration camps of Dutch children and women, and the widely celebrated Lord Kitchener implemented the ‘Scorched Earth’ practice. As the name suggests, this was extremely brutal and has influenced military action that we see today. What is often overlooked are the significant roles of Bla(c)k people and loss of Bla(c)k life during the Boer War.

What was motivating was learning more about Aboriginal trackers who fought in the Boer War. There’s a lot of writing that raises questions around what occurred exactly, but it’s very clear to me that Aboriginal soldiers fought in this war.¹ Some may have returned, yet there is great speculation that some did not. Immigration and colonial law in South Africa and Australia, strongly suggest this possibility.² I came across a telegram from Lord Kitchener requesting more ‘trackers’. In Western archives you need to read between the lines (and unfortunately the racism) to learn about the presence and impact of Bla(c)k folk in histories and doing so is really important to me. 

The documentation around an extensive list of adornments and tools determines them to be of Zulu origin, however question marks present next to the word 'Zulu' raises a lot of speculation about this archive and its documentation. Referring to the materials as 'Zulu' and 'Southern African' demonstrate an uncertainty by the valuers and clearly, an inaccuracy or unknowingness to whom exactly these materials belonged to.  

JS: I think there is a connection between these literal question marks we found in La Trobe’s collection records, and the question mark you speak to around how Aboriginal trackers engaged in the Boer War. As you developed this project, certainty of violence was clarified, yet the notated question marks remain.

Really core to your work is the dialogue with Zulu diaspora while handling the Southern African materials, which is presented as a sound work accessed via QR code in the physical installation. This sound work documents a conversation between yourself, South African vocalist Rara Zulu and her child while handling the Southern African materials in the collection. This was an intimate moment for the three of you, which was then brought into the public eye in such an intentional way. I wanted to ask about this gesture, and what you hope to affect and achieve through this?

RJR: My practice has always been very relational, drawing upon communal knowledges. It was important for me to spend time on Djaara Country, engage with local First Nations histories, the subsequent connections to La Trobe, and where I sit in all of this. I was privileged to engage in conversations with Dja Dja Wurrung Elder Aunty Marilyne Nicholls, Janet Bromley (Yorta Yorta artist and Dja Djuwima curator) and La Trobe Art Institute staff during my visits to Djaara Country. These interactions, research and my own visit to the basement informed my decision to invite Rara Zulu and her child to come into the collection stores space. Rara Zulu is a proud Zulu Southern African woman based in Narrm and an inimitable vocalist and musician who shares the African diasporic experience.

I want to honour and represent the power of Bla(c)k peoples and stories in my work and to do so I need to think critically around my own positionality. I thought of myself as a conduit, hoping to instil oxygen back into these very silenced materials. Yet, I had to deeply consider how to respect their vulnerability so they are not exoticised or exploited within such a visible public space. I hope the work can be a platform to signal their captivity while negotiating different silences and violences that exist within the institution. There are supposed to be photographs of Zulu tribes people that staff have still not found. There are materials listed that are no longer in the collection, with no paper trail. These issues raise a lot of questions, suspicions and reinforces the mistrust.

What happens when we include the necessary voices that have been excluded from the archival process? Rara Zulu was someone I really wanted to bring into that space, thinking again about access. I initially stood back to allow space for Rara and her kin to engage in their own way. Then we all came together and talked about what it means to have access and what repatriation could look like. We speculated on and imagined all the different possibilities, which was a really special moment and privilege.

I also felt like a proud Aunty when listening to Rara’s ten year old share their experience of physically holding a part of their history. We are rarely afforded such moments. When you exist within the diaspora in a nation-state that historically and continues to silence Bla(c)k people, it’s remarkable to be able to have experiences like these. The power to affirm and create a passage for our spiritual connections is crucial for diaspora peoples and their sense of self. However, mama Rara also reminds her kin that you don’t always have to have these physical materials in your possession to know who you are. This complex mother and child moment of self-determination in the face of colonial violence, reassures us that we know who we are and that we shouldn’t have to be validated by physical materials. Although, this is really hard when materials carry meaning and we have experienced various forms of “removal” to begin with. Experiences like this are part of an ongoing practice, of forging collective sites of knowledge sharing and creativity, to make space for our being and spiritual energies that exist between places.

JS: What the work really proposes is young Bla(c)k autonomy as a pathway for repatriation. There is a strong matriarchal power witnessed in how Rara and her child speak back to the Western institution in the sound component of your work. This project is seated in thinking about radical conservation or repatriation not just in the return, but in the impact stolen materials can have for diaspora living with a similar dislocation. My final question for you follows on from this—what do you feel is ‘next’, both for these materials, and for you?

RJR: Initially, I felt these materials just have to go back. There’s just no question in my mind. Determining where and how is the next hurdle. I thought about emailing the embassy, but then realised I need to take a breath, and encourage the necessary conversations with the appropriate communities, and eventually step back. I’ve been chatting with peers about what could happen next and the role of the institution in supporting these ambitions. I’m very interested in African collective engagement, particularly from the Southern region, to discuss how these materials can be made accessible and what are the possibilities for their life hereon in. 

I couldn’t do that within the physical site, so I needed to think more expansively about how to evoke all of these ideas within La Trobe Art Institute’s façade infrastructure. I hope the work can encapsulate all the possibilities and potentially influence what happens next. When you listen to the work, we talk about what a radical education could look like for young African people and whether it’s a school that is publicly accessible or a cultural institution that acts as a type of ‘keeping place’. We want African people to be able to engage in education about their history, about their stories, but the realities of how that’s determined is complicated by all kinds of power structures. 

The Boer War is South African history, but it’s also part of Indigenous and colonial Australian history. I wonder how engaging with stolen African materials could be a catalyst for other kinds of public exhibitions and their educational agency to encourage decolonial thinking or even repatriation beyond ‘the institution’. Could these activations pave a way for ethical, respectful and considered repatriation that not only educates but fosters appropriate relationships with Southern African partners and communities, to ensure our history is not merely left behind in a box that never sees daylight? This project has definitely raised more questions than clear cut answers. What I’m really excited to do next is support the Southern African materials to come out from the basement so they can feel the sun once again, resurrect their buried truths and begin their journey home. 

Lying Inside, Roberta Joy Rich, La Trobe Art Institute biannual façade commission, 24 July 2024 to 19 January 2025.