Art and Design Commons^™

'We Cannot Heal What We Will Not Face': Dismantling The Cultural Trauma And The May '98 Riots In Rani P Collaborations' Chinese Whispers, Alberta Natasia Adji, Marcella Polain

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

In May 1998, ethnic riots and widespread sexual violence occurred in several major Indonesian cities. Chinese-Indonesians were targeted and, since then, there has been an interest in feminist visual art created by Chinese-Indonesian diaspora in Australia. This article explores Chinese Whispers, a digital graphic novel by Rani Pramesti, a Chinese-Javanese-Indonesian actor and Melbourne-based performance maker, and her team of Indonesian-Australian collaborators. Applying solemn imagery, it narrates a young woman’s attempts at understanding cultural trauma that has marked both personal and public identities of Chinese-Indonesians. Imbued with black-and-white illustrations and interview transcripts, the digital graphic novel tries to answer questions …

The Return, Bruce Roberts Mutard

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

1943: Robert Wells has returned home from the war, having spent months in hospitals recovering from combat wounds. While being rehabilitated at Heidelberg Military Hospital, a series of visitors come to see him and, in the process, old wounds open, some close. What does seeing and doing the worst acts a human being can do to one another, do to a person?

Thirteen years after The Sacrifice, the follow-up story of Robert Wells concludes in this elegiac story of how the impact of war is felt, even far from the front lines.

Laundry, Bruce Roberts Mutard

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

A minicomic that features no comics and no action. Instead, it relies upon the knowledge and cultural memory of beholders to induce the narrative from the pictures. A story about a different kind of money laundering.